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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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.