Transgenic seeds in both India (Bt cotton) and Brazil (glyphosate-resistant soybeans) spread widely and rapidly through farming communities outside the reach of biosafety or bioproperty institutions. Stealth transgenics are saved, cross-bred, repackaged, sold, exchanged and planted in an anarchic agrarian capitalism that defies surveillance and control of firms and states. The outcome is more pro-poor than alternative modes of diffusion, but undermines a growing consensus in the international development community on appropriate bio- safety and intellectual property institutions for biotechnology. Second, stealth procurement of biotechnology divides nominally pro-poor political coalitions, driven by a great ideational divide on uncertainties and risks of transgenics. The ability of seeds to move underground through stealth strategies of farmers undermines widely-assumed bio-safety-regime capability. Likewise, property in biotechnology appears less monopolistic and powerful, more relational and contingent. Stealth practices of farmers in pursuit of transgenics contrary to wishes of firms, states and many NGOs suggest a different model of the farmer than that often encountered in both developmentalist and anti-'GMO' discourse: more active, creative and autonomous, less hapless and supine. Resultant incapacity of social institutions to secure interests of firms and states in biotechnology renders more likely eventual development of controls from genetic engineering - the 'terminator technology' of political dramaturgy.

https://faculty.washington.edu/jhannah/geog270aut07/readings/GreenGeneRevolutions/Herring%20-%20StealthSeeds.pdf

Stealth seeds: Bioproperty, biosafety, biopolitics

The genomics revolution in biology has enabled technologies with unprecedented potential; genetic engineering is changing the terrain of development studies. Societies have reacted with indifference or appreciation to genetically engineered pharmaceuticals, beginning with insulin; yet for food and agriculture, a globally contentious politics and unprecedented policy dilemmas have arisen. Transgenic organisms raise questions of property, ethics and safety unimaginable a generation ago: what can be owned and with what responsibility? Much turns on science: how one conceptualizes evidence, knowledge, uncertainty and risk. Both opponents and proponents of frontier applications in biotechnology have a poverty story to tell, but with divergent implications. The balance in this global debate has perceptibly shifted; a new developmentalist consensus concludes that the world's poor may benefit from genetic engineering: the question is 'under what conditions'? This essay introduces a collection of scholarly treatments that begin with the needs of the poor - for income, nutrition, environmental integrity - and evaluate theory and evidence for contributions from transgenic crops. The new consensus assumes much about biosafety, bioproperty and biopolitics that is contrary to ground realities - the actual capacity of firms and states to monitor and control biotechnology - but raises new questions at the frontiers of development studies.

/pdf/the-genomics-revolution-and-development-studies-science-46gouwym7q.pdf

The genomics revolution and development studies: Science, poverty and politics

Though promoted by the Government of India, and endorsed by dominant international organizations concerned with agriculture, biotechnology has produced fierce resistance and divisions. “Operation Cremate Monsanto” combined nationalist appeals, opposition to multinational capital, and rejection of genetic engineering in one integrated critique. The movement failed; Monsanto's technology spread rapidly and widely in India. The movement illustrated a larger problematic of understanding interests under conditions of rapid and complex technological change. Science continually presents new challenges to the way interests are understood by citizens and political classes that control states; the sea change in redefinitions of interests — of both individuals and states — introduced by, for example, the atmospheric science of ozone holes and climate change is archetypal, as are the internationally contentious battles in trade and property of “genetically modified organisms.” Interests in biotechnology are ...

Why did “operation cremate monsanto” fail?

This paper investigates why and how issues around the diffusion of GM technologies and products to developing countries have become so central to a debate which has shifted away from technical issues of cost-benefit optimisation in a context of uniform mass production and consumption in the North, to the moral case for GM crops to feed the hungry and aid ‘development’ in the South. Using comparison between agricultural biotechnology and the ‘Green Revolution’ as a cross cutting theme, the contributions of this paper are threefold. Firstly, by analysing biotechnology as a set of overlapping frames within a discursive formation, four frames are identified which summarise key challenges presented by biotechnology era. Secondly, the use of Foucault's concept of bio-power to synthesise key themes from the frame analysis illuminates the ‘revolutionary’ nature of the biotech revolution. Thirdly, the potential of actor-network theory to provide a tools for the empirical study of processes of (re)negotiation of nature/society relations in the context of agricultural biotechnology controversies is explored.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1467-9523.2005.00310.x

Biotechnology and the Politics of Truth: From the Green Revolution to an Evergreen Revolution

2 This paper was prepared for a project on Globalisation and the International Governance of Modern Biotechnology, which is part of the Globalisation and Poverty programme, a three year programme of research, funded by the Department for International Development, exploring the linkages between globalisation processes and poverty. Summary This paper explores the dynamic interaction of global and more local knowledge about agriculture, food and rural development through policymaking in two periods in India-the 'Green Revolution' and 'biotechnology' eras. Comparing the two eras, the paper highlights how the biotechnology era differs in a number of key respects from the Green Revolution. These include: the nature and complexity of policy narratives associated with agriculture, food security and poverty; the types, numbers and networks of actors inside and outside the state involved in policymaking; the form and location of expertise and sites of policy making, from the local to the global; and the nature and extent of policy debate, controversy and dissent. Between the two eras, the paper shows how policy emphases have shifted from a focus on national food self-sufficiency and nation-building in a planned economy to engaging with a liberalised, highly unequal and uncertain, global market economy, and, with this, from Cold war security concerns to liberalisation and trade issues. Agricultural policy debates have thus shifted from small-scale farming for food production to agriculture as a globally competitive industry. The result has been a move from the involvement of relatively few players in the policy process, to multiple players, including many non-state actors (such as NGOs, private sector corporations, the media), each with global connections. Funding flows too have changed from international philanthropy with state support to an increasing reliance on the private sector. This is associated with different practices of science-from field based to lab based-and from public good research premised on the free exchange of knowledge to research governed by intellectual property concerns and commercial confidentiality. Despite the easy similarities and apparent continuities between the two eras-used prolifically in popular and policy discourse-the paper argues that the biotechnology era is unquestionably different. There is not going to be a simple replication of the great Green Revolution success story in India, and, the paper argues, more attention needs to be paid to the important differences in policy context and process if some of the challenges of the biotechnology era are to be met.

/pdf/tracing-policy-connections-the-politics-of-knowledge-in-the-2phcns9k0q.pdf

Tracing policy connections: the politics of knowledge in the Green Revolution and biotechnology eras in India

A biotechnology story: notes from India.

Abstract:This essay explores the relationship between scientific knowledge and democracy in India, using COVID-19 as a case study. It shows how the state consolidates itself through technological fixes, ignoring deeper issues in civil society. The essay covers the impact of COVID-19 on migrants and the informal economy and suggests that civil society needs a biopolitics from below. It discusses the need to rework concepts like citizenship and vulnerability and cautions that the epidemic has to be seen as a prelude to the deeper demands of the Anthropocene.

Science and the COVID Epidemic in India

The essay argues for an exploration of alternative worldviews and a search for a different set of categories. It proposes that the classic ‘for a Sociology of India’ debate draw upon Ziauddin Sardar’s essays on the post normal society. Sardar explores a sociology of complexity, chaos and contradiction, thus calling for an epistemic examination of the relation between science and society, which in turn anticipates a set of thought experiments on the future of the Anthropocene.

C. Parmar

Papers

A biotechnology story: notes from India.

Science and the COVID Epidemic in India

Beyond the Post Normal