Biotechnology in Bangalore

The politics of innovation

Bangalore in Karnataka, southern India, has become an iconic technology capital, fuelled by massively successful software and technology industries. Many people see it as a taste of Asia's future, where the old concerns of 'development' are banished by a high-growth knowledge economy.

Despite the impressive growth of the technology sector and knowledge economy of Bangalore, rural areas are suffering an extended and painful agrarian crisis that is pushing thousands of poor, indebted farmers to commit suicide. In the city, inequality continues to worsen with rapid urban growth.

Biotechnology is seen as the obvious successor to information technology. This sector is growing and high-profile events and conferences in Bangalore have added to the biotechnology hype.

Three classic models are touted as critical for innovation. All apply to Bangalore:

• The excellence model — top quality academic institutions sit nearby industry, with benefits flowing between them. In Bangalore, the Indian Institute of Science and National Centre for Biological Sciences are world-class institutions. Bangalore's colleges of engineering and science produce highly trained students.
• The hub and cluster model — linking different components of an innovation chain. Recent investment in transport highways, a new 'biotechnology corridor' and the establishment of a biotech park create a hi-tech cluster in Bangalore.
• The public private partnership model — links between the public and private sectors drive innovation. The Vision Group, which drove Karnataka's state policy on biotechnology, involved high-level public and private sector players. State funds backed infrastructure development, while private finance flowed to start-up companies.

Research from the Institute of Development Studies in the UK looked at eight Bangalore-based research and development establishments, asking how they matched up to innovation models and what agricultural biotechnologies they were actually producing. The findings included:

• Only one company, US-based multinational Monsanto, had a product available on the local market: genetically-modified cotton, produced elsewhere and adapted for the Indian market.
• Other companies were making money and a stock market launch generated millions. But their incomes came mostly from contract research for US and European clients, using the low-risk, fast-return out-sourcing model that companies knew and preferred.
• There was no substantial evidence of new products being developed for Indian settings and local needs.
• The extensive public research capacity in Bangalore was not being mobilised for development-oriented innovation. High quality science institutions continue to seek publication in prestigious international journals rather than producing new technologies for mass use.
• While public-private partnership is the mantra, this is mostly one-way traffic: the private sector (often Monsanto) contracts under-funded university scientists to do company work in university labs.

Behind the hype about biotechnology, a more mundane story is unfolding: jobs for a few well-qualified professionals, a few new products and big gains from rising share prices for the lucky few.

Technology and innovation are equated with development. Anyone who questions this is dismissed as opposing progress. This policy lock-in benefits a science-business elite, who have become increasingly influential in political processes. Backlashes do occur. Rural farmers' organisations have challenged commitments to genetically-modified crops, for example. But such challenges are rare and easily dismissed.

As science and technology become ever more central to development, the politics of innovation pathways needs to be central to policy debate. With Bangalore seen as a model for the future, we must ask deep questions about the choices being made. These are choices about values, politics and outcomes — especially for poor people.

Ian Scoones
Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9RE, UK
T +44 (0)1273 678274
i.scoones@ids.ac.uk

See also

Science, Agriculture and the Politics of Policy: The Case of Biotechnology in India, India: Orient Longman, by Ian Scoones, 2006

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