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K. P. Prabhakaran Nair

NOW that the heat and dust kicked up over the hurried decision of the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) to release the Mahyco-Monsanto Biotech Pvt Ltd (MMB) Bt cotton — supposedly `resistant' to the American bollworm — is beginning to settle down, it is time to introspect, in right earnest, where our research and development (R&D) efforts in agriculture has taken us these past decades. What could have been a colossal fortune for us has now changed hands and will pour into the kitty of MMB. The parent multinational corporation, Monsanto, will gross in excess of Rs 5,000 crore in the next two-to-three years through the sale of Bt cotton seeds in India. Just this cotton season, beginning April-May, MMB will sweep at least Rs 21 crore from the sale of seeds.

Though the GEAC's ill-thought-out clearance restricts the new cotton to just western and southern India, fly-by-night seed agencies, in a great hurry to make a fast buck, are already clandestinely routing the Bt seeds to northern India — Punjab and Haryana — where it is forbidden right now. Now, the authorities starting from the Union Agriculture Minister to the Chief Minister of Punjab are issuing statements against the illegal cultivation of Bt cotton in the northern States. Almost a similar thing is happening in Andhra Pradesh. As it is, trade in cotton seed has the dubious distinction of conning the Indian cotton farmer. The shameful spectacle last year of the `Navbharat' (Bollgard, the Bt cotton in disguise) cotton seed distributed clandestinely on large-scale in Gujarat and the subsequent order of New Delhi to the State government to burn and plough in the crop has only proved how devious machinations wreck havoc on the farm front.

The Microsoft Chief, Mr Bill Gates, once famously said: "Our primary assets, which are our software and software-development skills, do not show up on the balance-sheet at all''. Obviously, he was referring to the intangible assets of his empire — the human skill, which, though do not show up in rounded figures running into billions of dollars leads to the colossal fortunes for Microsoft. Extending the same logic, can it be said that if India should today draw up a balance-sheet on its farm sector — juxtaposing investments in R&D, especially that in biotechnology, with payoffs — we can come clean with a statement akin to what the computer king made?

In other words, why is it that despite the crores of rupees being spent by the Department of Biotechnology, the monolith Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), 31 agricultural universities spread across the country (some engaged in cotton `research'), 81 national research centres (some of which also doing cotton research), the apex Central Cotton Research Institute (doing exclusive research on cotton), endless `commissions' (the most recent one being the National Commission on Agriculture) and parliamentary panels and Planning Commission meetings, India could not dream up a Bt cotton of its own, which could have pre-empted the American MNC onslaught on Indian soil? Alternatively, are India's intangible assets in agriculture next to nothing? These are uncomfortable, inconvenient and unsettling questions, yet very relevant ones in the present times of global competition and survival of the fittest.

Both Merck and DuPont are chemical giant MNCs. Monsanto, which pioneered the Bt cotton, is well into life-sciences. A study by Mr Randall Morck of the University of Alberta in Canada and Mr Bernard Yeung of the University of Michigan in US showed that the share price of American multinationals, that spend heavily on R&D, rises when they buy foreign subsidiaries, but falls when an MNC with a low R&D spending buys a subsidiary abroad. It is the substantial R&D investments by Monsanto in Bt technology that helped its scrip rise by 8 per cent the day after the GEAC clearance was given for MMB to go ahead with the commercial cultivation of Bt cotton in southern and western India. This shows that it is the R&D that powers public confidence. Do the state-sponsored establishments in agriculture in India spur the same kind of confidence? An example would suffice that they do not.

Coconut is an economic mainstay of Kerala and two years ago its production was threatened by a mite infestation, popularly known as the `mandari' disease.

Much media hype followed and when the going got tough, parleys were arranged between the Kerala Agricultural University (KAU) — with a sprawling campus in Trichur and two others, one in the capital and another in the north — and the Central Plantation Crops Research Institute, doing exclusive research in coconut — with its main campus not very far from the one of the KAU in the northern tip in the coconut belt of the state.

All that happened was incessant meetings, decisions, slipshod `control' measures that only resulted in crores being wasted and the mandari menace simply refusing to go away.

More recently, rice farmers in Palakkad district, in scores, are snuffing out their lives and a KAU controlled rice research station is only a stone's throw away. And many a rice farmer have complained that the KAU has never been able to make an impact on rice cultivation in the region. In fact, even for pest control, they have to travel to nearby Coimbatore city (in Tamil Nadu) to buy insecticides.

These problems of farmers cannot be pushed under the carpet as petty ones not within the ambit of the top heavy administrative umbrella of the university. If establishments are not there to cater to the needs of the clients — in this case the farmers — then, what are they for?

An analysis of several State-sponsored institutions engaged in agricultural `research' shows that more than 80 per cent of the budgeted amount of each unit goes towards salary payment.

Buying better people

This leads to the inevitable question: How to buy better people so that the intangible assets in Indian agricultural R&D enhances to a level that can be globally competitive? Some years back, the former Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kwan Yu, the father of the tiny island state who made it what it is today, said: "If you pay peanuts, you would only get monkeys''.

Is our reward system appropriate to contemporary needs? Do we set goals when we hire personnel to run establishments or just allow people to "sail along the bureaucratic tunnel''? Is there a mid-course correction when accomplishments fall short of expected targets? Or, more, appropriately, is sycophancy an irremediable canker in our professional structures that can do damage to the detriment of the few brilliant to the advantage of the great many undeserving?

Or, more pertinently, is the dictum, "no accolades for excellence'', nor the "boot for sloppishness'', the rule, rather than the exception, in publicly-funded R&D in agriculture?

The nation could well-afford to do some introspection on the above lines. If not, more Bt cotton would follow. And India can stay put, when its inherent wealth, which should be equitably enjoyed by all Indians, gets siphoned off, offshore.

(The author is a senior fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.)

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