The GEAC, in its meeting, considered the demand made by the civil society that prior to approving LSTs of Bt brinjal, biosafety data should be posted on the Ministry's website for 90 days to give people sufficient time to provide feedback. But GEAC decided to post the list of biosafety studies; the data generated by the company and proposed protocol for LSTs and seed production for only 15 days. In any case, the public's comments are not available on the GEAC website,nor is there any commitment from the Ministry that the objections raised by concerned people will be posted on the website for public viewing. This is not a good precedent and makes a mockery of public participation.

Because of the disastrous performance of Bt cotton in several parts of the country leading to the Andhra Pradesh government filing a case against Mahyco-Monsanto, the need to conduct a socio-economic evaluation of any new genetically engineered crop prior to its release is finally being acknowledged by regulatory agencies like the GEAC.

Undertaking socio-economic evaluation became mandatory at least since September 2003 when the Cartagena Protocol The Biosafety Protocol requires socioeconomic assessment of new genetically engineered crops, particularly on small farmers and traditional methods of cultivation, as well as on indigenous knowledge.

No studies have been conducted so far to assess the socio-economic impact of Bt brinjal. Mahyco has said that  socio-economic studies will be conducted along with the LSTs of Bt brinjal, but in the meantime the company has tried to prove through studies conducted by some foreign Universities that Bt brinjal offers economic benefits over conventional brinjal  cultivation. Two studies are quoted in support of socio-economic advantages, one by Mark Chong,a business management graduate from the Singapore Management University who conducted this study as part of his doctoral thesis in Communications! The other is a study done by Vijesh Krishna and Matin Qaim of the University of Hohenheim in Germany. This study was supported by USAID, an aggressive promoter of Agbiotechnology. Matin Qaim is the author of the infamous and widely quoted study on Bt cotton in  India, which was conducted exclusively on the experimental fields of Monsanto- Mahyco and which (not surprisingly) showed that the use of Bt cotton led to an 87%increase in cotton yield in India. Qaim and Zilberman's dubious paper was condemned by a series of commentators across the world and the abysmal performance of the Mahyco-Monsanto Bt  cotton,despite the premature accolades engineered by Qaim and Zilberman, ensured that its provisional release was not renewed.

Mahyco seed company has quoted these two studies to make the point that international scholars have demonstrated that the socio-economic impact of Bt brinjal is positive for farmers and that they will benefit from increased yields and lower use of pesticides.

Let us examine the two papers and see what they say about the socio-economic benefits of Bt brinjal. Chong's paper is an exercise in risk perception, not evaluation of socio-econom-ic impact. The title itself says that: "Perception of the risks and benefits of Bt eggplant by Indian farmers". The study is premised on the hypothesis that the moral aspects of risk provide a better explanation of risk perception than the psychometric paradigm or Cultural Theory. The study uses Bt brinjal as a case study to assess whether moral aspects of risk figure in the risk perception of Indian farmers or whether economic benefits outweigh the perceived risks.

The study is a rather simple exercise to elicit responses from 100 brinjal farmers who have been provided a certain text containing information they must respond to.Their responses have been interpreted as their perception of risk. The text given to farmers for response is reproduced below. Its suggestiveness is evident.

"As you know, brinjal farmers in Maharashtra such as yourself stand to lose a large portion of their crop each year to pests such as the fruit and shoot borer. These farmers -like you –have been trying to control the pests by spraying pesticides,but pesticide application has a number of disadvantages.

To address this problem,a private company and two public institutions in India are now working to develop a new type of brinjal seed.This new seed is expected to offer significant protection against the fruit and shoot borer. At the same time, farmers who use the new seed will not need to spray any pesticide against the borer, nor will they need to invest in new equipment, tools, or fertilizers. The scientists who are developing this new variety say that it will look, feel and taste just like the brinjals you are growing now.But unlike ordinary brinjals, the new variety is 'injected' with a soil  microbe that gives the plant its provariety is Bt brinjal and it works in basically the same way as the Bt cotton that has been introduced in Maharashtra and elsewhere in India. Bt is not known to be harmful to human or animal health.

However,experts have also cautioned that there are some risks :Bt brinjal seed will cost a few times more than ordinary brinjal seed. Moreover, nobody can predict at this point whether consumers will accept the new type of brinjal. Climactic conditions can also influence the level of yield farmers get from using Bt brinjal.

There are also some environmental risks: farmers adopting the new seed will need to follow strict guidelines, such as setting aside a small part of his plot to growing ordinary brinjals. If not, Bt brinjal will lose its ability to protect itself against the borer after a few years and farmers will then need to use even more pesticides than before to control the damage inflicted by the pest. If not carefully managed, using Bt brinjal may also lead to the growth of  "superweeds" and other unforeseen environmental problems. So, while there are benefits in using Bt brinjal, there are also some risks …"

Please share with me any thoughts and feeling you have about this new brinjal seed. Is there anything you find objectionable about the new seed?

This is a fairly straightforward study to understand how farmers perceive risk and what factors will influence them to accept or reject a new crop technology. It says nothing about the socioeconomic impact of Bt brinjal. The other study by Krishna and Qaim is another piece of fiction on allegedly proving the socio-economic benefits of Bt brinjal. Actually speaking, this study attempts to study not the socio-economic impact of Bt brinjal at all, but the dynamics of profit in a model of public-private research partnership.

The conclusion, not surprisingly, is that a research partnership of this kind, which aims to develop a transgenic variety out of a proprietary technology (Bt gene) that is licensed to the public sector, will result in profit reduction for the private sector even though ample profit margins will remain. The paper equally unsurprisingly concludes that farmers will benefit when the transgenic variety is made available through the public rather than the private sector. 

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