This is excerpt of an interview with one of the leading professional dealing with agri-biotechnology.The interview is provided as is without any editorial oversight by us.
In March, K.K. Narayanan— one of the Founder-Directors of Metahelix Life Sciences— exited the company after 15 years. In 2010, he sold the agri-biotechnology company to the Tatas but remained Managing Director as part of the deal. Narayanan continues to be an advisor to the Tata group.
The focus crops for Metahelix are cotton, rice, maize, millets (bajra) and a few vegetables. Here, K.K. Narayanan discusses with the writer the arduous but persistent growth journey of genetically-modified crops in India, and his views on the government strategy to double farmers’ incomes.
No new genetically-modified (GM) crop has been approved in India after Bt cotton in 2002. At Metahelix, was there any hesitancy about persisting with agri-biotechnology?
This is a question that often comes up, particularly from investors and the parent company. But they realise you need to have a foot in the door. One day, when the door opens, you should be there. Having invested so much money, time and the intellect of so many people, it would be foolish to step back. We have revenue streams coming from hybrids; part of it you set aside. It does have a hit on the bottom line but that is a conscious decision. It is a long-term investment.
Do you have difficulty attracting talent?
Those who are choosing this field of science are confused and some are not very confident. But the opportunities are huge for a largely agrarian country like India. To fulfil their promises of equitable development, our political bosses will have to leverage the technology.
Bt cotton is under price control. The Agriculture Minister believes it is expensive. Is that what farmers tell you?
Farmers are wise. They take commercial decisions. I don’t think the government should intervene in prices. When we talk of “free market play”, you need a free market. On the one side, you are choking the pipeline of alternate or competitive technologies. So there are a few people who have a head start. (Monsanto’s Bt cottonseed technology has more than 90 percent share of the market-ed). Now the hurdle has been raised to such a high level that nobody else is able to cross it. And then you cry “monopoly, monopoly.” This is an artificially created monopoly. If the regulatory system can be scientific and rational, these problems can be eased. Indian companies, both in the public and private sectors, can develop competitive technologies. Farmers need to have a choice.
Does the present regulatory system help incumbents?
It is inadvertently creating a monopoly. They (incumbents) are also having trouble because they cannot bring newer versions. Today, the entry barrier is regulation— it is not the capability to develop technologies.
Our political leaders associate agri-biotechnology with American companies.
If you look from the stratosphere, you will see that one company is giving the technology to everybody. You are not realising why the other companies are not coming up to that level. It is because of regulatory hurdles. We have developed Bt cotton with stacked genes for bollworm resistance. It is different from that of Monsanto, the leading provider today. We have Bt rice and herbicide-tolerant maize. These are not imported technologies. We have developed them here.
How long have you been waiting?
We have been waiting since 2007. We were one of the few companies to get approval for our own Bt cotton. But it was a single-gene product that protected against the leaf-eating caterpillar. We could not go to the market because it has moved to double genes. So we developed (Bt cotton with) other genes which give protection against bollworms. But we have had no success (with field trials) since 2007-08.
What about Bt rice?
We did a field trial in 2009. After that, we have not had permission. In 2010-11 we got GEAC (Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee, the apex regulatory body) permission for large-scale field trials in Andhra Pradesh. But A.P. was not giving us the NOC (no objection certificate) which became mandatory after February 2010. The permission lapsed because it was for one season. We went back to GEAC for open-ended permission. By the time they gave it, A.P. was no longer A.P.
So we had to apply to Telangana for NOC and that is still pending. It is 2016 and you can imagine how much time is being wasted.
And herbicide- tolerant maize?
We have just selected the (DNA recombination) event and have applied for trials. It is still at an early stage. But if commercialisation was within sight, we could have easily fast-tracked it. When the present government came, we were quite hopeful. But suddenly you find other arms like the Swadeshi Jagran Manch or the Bharatiya Kisan Union pulling in the other direction. The Maharashtra government gave permission for field trials and, before it happened, it pulled back.
Genetically-modified mustard, DMH-11, developed by Deepak Pental of Delhi University is awaiting approval for commercial cultivation. Metahelix has the rights to DMH 4 which is a non-GM mustard hybrid. How as it been received?
Oh, it is certainly better in terms of yield and productivity than open pollinating varieties. That is a given because of hybrid vigour. What is important is not whether it is absolutely better but whether it can compensate for the negatives with increased yields or revenues. Like any product, it comes with some challenges. It takes five days more to mature. Farmers feel this will affect planting of the next crop. The plant habit may be important. If it grows too tall, it is difficult to harvest. Labour is no longer cheap and availability is an issue. The seed size is small. Famers prefer bolder seeds. Actually, what is important is the oil content.
The Central Institute of Cotton Research believes that India does not need Bt technology. With high-density planting of short duration cotton, it says, the crop can be harvested before bollworms arrive.
For a country as large and diverse as India, you need a multi-pronged approach. I say this even in the context of Vitamin-A rice or Golden Rice. Some people say, give carrot or green leaves and solve the problem. If you are giving Golden Rice, is somebody preventing you from giving a carrot? No. (Bt) hybrids and high-density planting are not mutually exclusive. Ultimately, you have to test it out, validate it. Our farmers are wise enough. They will pick only the good ones. The others they will throw into the Bay of Bengal.
In May, the government tried to give a compulsory license on patented Bt cotton using the Essential Commodities Act.
Compulsory licensing is bad. If you stifle the system, you are going to impact innovation. Compulsory licensing is warranted where there is an emergency, a famine or a war-like situation. Bringing cotton seed into the Essential Commodities Act was an arbitrary decision.
Do you think the government has a strategy to double farmers’ income by 2022?
There are a few things which should be considered: increase productivity and reduce the cost. This can be achieved by leveraging technology. It is not up there. It is not blue sky. It has been proven and there is enough evidence. Take the example of Bt cotton itself. Studies have shown how incomes have gone up and that is the reason why 95 percent of farmers are cultivating it.
The other aspect, do not stop with production. There is a huge scope in this country for value addition. For example, there is an estimate which says that the farmer who produces the bean gets 1/20,000th the price we pay for the coffee we drink here (at Café Coffee Day in Bengaluru).Why not make it 1/200? And, here again, there is huge scope for technological intervention.
Is there a GM solution to alleviate the shortage of pulses?
Some of the major pests which infect cotton also affect pulses. So if you have a Bt solution you are actually saving on pesticides and improving productivity. What these technologies do is actually stabilise production. The uncertainty with regard to production is, to a large extent, eliminated or mitigated.
Bt cotton is an example. The technology only mitigates the impact of bollworms on yield. So the farmer puts more inputs and produces more. It is a kind of insurance. If you give that for pulses, farmers will give more inputs to increase productivity. Today, our productivity in pulses is abysmal.
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The United Nations has shaped so much of global co-operation and regulation that we wouldn’t recognise our world today without the UN’s pervasive role in it. So many small details of our lives – such as postage and copyright laws – are subject to international co-operation nurtured by the UN.
In its 75th year, however, the UN is in a difficult moment as the world faces climate crisis, a global pandemic, great power competition, trade wars, economic depression and a wider breakdown in international co-operation.
Still, the UN has faced tough times before – over many decades during the Cold War, the Security Council was crippled by deep tensions between the US and the Soviet Union. The UN is not as sidelined or divided today as it was then. However, as the relationship between China and the US sours, the achievements of global co-operation are being eroded.
The way in which people speak about the UN often implies a level of coherence and bureaucratic independence that the UN rarely possesses. A failure of the UN is normally better understood as a failure of international co-operation.
We see this recently in the UN’s inability to deal with crises from the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, to civil conflict in Syria, and the failure of the Security Council to adopt a COVID-19 resolution calling for ceasefires in conflict zones and a co-operative international response to the pandemic.
The UN administration is not primarily to blame for these failures; rather, the problem is the great powers – in the case of COVID-19, China and the US – refusing to co-operate.
Where states fail to agree, the UN is powerless to act.
Marking the 75th anniversary of the official formation of the UN, when 50 founding nations signed the UN Charter on June 26, 1945, we look at some of its key triumphs and resounding failures.
Five successes
1. Peacekeeping
The United Nations was created with the goal of being a collective security organisation. The UN Charter establishes that the use of force is only lawful either in self-defence or if authorised by the UN Security Council. The Security Council’s five permanent members, being China, US, UK, Russia and France, can veto any such resolution.
The UN’s consistent role in seeking to manage conflict is one of its greatest successes.
A key component of this role is peacekeeping. The UN under its second secretary-general, the Swedish statesman Dag Hammarskjöld – who was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace prize after he died in a suspicious plane crash – created the concept of peacekeeping. Hammarskjöld was responding to the 1956 Suez Crisis, in which the US opposed the invasion of Egypt by its allies Israel, France and the UK.
UN peacekeeping missions involve the use of impartial and armed UN forces, drawn from member states, to stabilise fragile situations. “The essence of peacekeeping is the use of soldiers as a catalyst for peace rather than as the instruments of war,” said then UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, when the forces won the 1988 Nobel Peace Prize following missions in conflict zones in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Central America and Europe.
However, peacekeeping also counts among the UN’s major failures.
2. Law of the Sea
Negotiated between 1973 and 1982, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) set up the current international law of the seas. It defines states’ rights and creates concepts such as exclusive economic zones, as well as procedures for the settling of disputes, new arrangements for governing deep sea bed mining, and importantly, new provisions for the protection of marine resources and ocean conservation.
Mostly, countries have abided by the convention. There are various disputes that China has over the East and South China Seas which present a conflict between power and law, in that although UNCLOS creates mechanisms for resolving disputes, a powerful state isn’t necessarily going to submit to those mechanisms.
Secondly, on the conservation front, although UNCLOS is a huge step forward, it has failed to adequately protect oceans that are outside any state’s control. Ocean ecosystems have been dramatically transformed through overfishing. This is an ecological catastrophe that UNCLOS has slowed, but failed to address comprehensively.
3. Decolonisation
The idea of racial equality and of a people’s right to self-determination was discussed in the wake of World War I and rejected. After World War II, however, those principles were endorsed within the UN system, and the Trusteeship Council, which monitored the process of decolonisation, was one of the initial bodies of the UN.
Although many national independence movements only won liberation through bloody conflicts, the UN has overseen a process of decolonisation that has transformed international politics. In 1945, around one third of the world’s population lived under colonial rule. Today, there are less than 2 million people living in colonies.
When it comes to the world’s First Nations, however, the UN generally has done little to address their concerns, aside from the non-binding UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of 2007.
4. Human rights
The Human Rights Declaration of 1948 for the first time set out fundamental human rights to be universally protected, recognising that the “inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”.
Since 1948, 10 human rights treaties have been adopted – including conventions on the rights of children and migrant workers, and against torture and discrimination based on gender and race – each monitored by its own committee of independent experts.
The language of human rights has created a new framework for thinking about the relationship between the individual, the state and the international system. Although some people would prefer that political movements focus on ‘liberation’ rather than ‘rights’, the idea of human rights has made the individual person a focus of national and international attention.
5. Free trade
Depending on your politics, you might view the World Trade Organisation as a huge success, or a huge failure.
The WTO creates a near-binding system of international trade law with a clear and efficient dispute resolution process.
The majority Australian consensus is that the WTO is a success because it has been good for Australian famers especially, through its winding back of subsidies and tariffs.
However, the WTO enabled an era of globalisation which is now politically controversial.
Recently, the US has sought to disrupt the system. In addition to the trade war with China, the Trump Administration has also refused to appoint tribunal members to the WTO’s Appellate Body, so it has crippled the dispute resolution process. Of course, the Trump Administration is not the first to take issue with China’s trade strategies, which include subsidises for ‘State Owned Enterprises’ and demands that foreign firms transfer intellectual property in exchange for market access.
The existence of the UN has created a forum where nations can discuss new problems, and climate change is one of them. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was set up in 1988 to assess climate science and provide policymakers with assessments and options. In 1992, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change created a permanent forum for negotiations.
However, despite an international scientific body in the IPCC, and 165 signatory nations to the climate treaty, global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase.
Under the Paris Agreement, even if every country meets its greenhouse gas emission targets we are still on track for ‘dangerous warming’. Yet, no major country is even on track to meet its targets; while emissions will probably decline this year as a result of COVID-19, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will still increase.
This illustrates a core conundrum of the UN in that it opens the possibility of global cooperation, but is unable to constrain states from pursuing their narrowly conceived self-interests. Deep co-operation remains challenging.
Five failures of the UN
1. Peacekeeping
During the Bosnian War, Dutch peacekeeping forces stationed in the town of Srebrenica, declared a ‘safe area’ by the UN in 1993, failed in 1995 to stop the massacre of more than 8000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces. This is one of the most widely discussed examples of the failures of international peacekeeping operations.
On the massacre’s 10th anniversary, then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan wrote that the UN had “made serious errors of judgement, rooted in a philosophy of impartiality”, contributing to a mass murder that would “haunt our history forever”.
If you look at some of the other infamous failures of peacekeeping missions – in places such as Rwanda, Somalia and Angola – it is the limited powers given to peacekeeping operations that have resulted in those failures.
2. The invasion of Iraq
The invasion of Iraq by the US in 2003, which was unlawful and without Security Council authorisation, reflects the fact that the UN is has very limited capacity to constrain the actions of great powers.
The Security Council designers created the veto power so that any of the five permanent members could reject a Council resolution, so in that way it is programmed to fail when a great power really wants to do something that the international community generally condemns.
In the case of the Iraq invasion, the US didn’t veto a resolution, but rather sought authorisation that it did not get. The UN, if you go by the idea of collective security, should have responded by defending Iraq against this unlawful use of force.
The invasion proved a humanitarian disaster with the loss of more than 400,000 lives, and many believe that it led to the emergence of the terrorist Islamic State.
3. Refugee crises
The UN brokered the 1951 Refugee Convention to address the plight of people displaced in Europe due to World War II; years later, the 1967 Protocol removed time and geographical restrictions so that the Convention can now apply universally (although many countries in Asia have refused to sign it, owing in part to its Eurocentric origins).
Despite these treaties, and the work of the UN High Commission for Refugees, there is somewhere between 30 and 40 million refugees, many of them, such as many Palestinians, living for decades outside their homelands. This is in addition to more than 40 million people displaced within their own countries.
While for a long time refugee numbers were reducing, in recent years, particularly driven by the Syrian conflict, there have been increases in the number of people being displaced.
During the COVID-19 crisis, boatloads of Rohingya refugees were turned away by port after port. This tragedy has echoes of pre-World War II when ships of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany were refused entry by multiple countries.
And as a catastrophe of a different kind looms, there is no international framework in place for responding to people who will be displaced by rising seas and other effects of climate change.
4. Conflicts without end
Across the world, there is a shopping list of unresolved civil conflicts and disputed territories.
Palestine and Kashmir are two of the longest-running failures of the UN to resolve disputed lands. More recent, ongoing conflicts include the civil wars in Syria and Yemen.
The common denominator of unresolved conflicts is either division among the great powers, or a lack of international interest due to the geopolitical stakes not being sufficiently high. For instance, the inaction during the Rwandan civil war in the 1990s was not due to a division among great powers, but rather a lack of political will to engage.
In Syria, by contrast, Russia and the US have opposing interests and back opposing sides: Russia backs the government of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, whereas the US does not.
5. Acting like it’s 1945
The UN is increasingly out of step with the reality of geopolitics today.
The permanent members of the Security Council reflect the division of power internationally at the end of World War II. The continuing exclusion of Germany, Japan, and rising powers such as India and Indonesia, reflects the failure to reflect the changing balance of power.
Also, bodies such as the IMF and the World Bank, which are part of the UN system, continue to be dominated by the West. In response, China has created potential rival institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
Western domination of UN institutions undermines their credibility. However, a more fundamental problem is that institutions designed in 1945 are a poor fit with the systemic global challenges – of which climate change is foremost – that we face today.