Regulatory policy on biotechnology advocates decision-making according to technical and scientific criteria. In practice, however, regulation emerges through a political process of negotiation between groups with diverse agendas. New research looks at the story behind India’s biosafety regulations and the introduction of ‘Bt’ cotton – a genetically-engineered, pest-resistant variety – by biotechnology multinational Monsanto. The Bt cotton case study shows how the biotechnology process is not a neat technical affair, but highly contested and politically charged.

Research from the Institute of Development Studies looks at how India’s biosafety regulations work in practice, using the process that culminated in the formal approval of Bt cotton for commercial production in 2002 as a case study. The author shows that regulatory decisions are not made on the basis of a linear approach to science-based decision-making but from the interactions of a wide range of actors – scientists, bureaucrats, politicians, farmers, NGO activists, and media commentators – across local, national and even global arenas.

India is the world’s third largest cotton producer, accounting for around 15% of global production. The amount of land planted with cotton is falling as rising costs of inputs and declining world prices reduce profitability. Of the $620 million of pesticides applied in India each year about a half is used to combat pest species which attack cotton. The financial and environmental costs of multiple pesticide applications are widely recognised.

The southern state of Karnataka is both a major cotton producing area and a centre of India’s burgeoning biotechnology industry. Regulatory debates may be formally located within national ministries in Delhi but they influence, and are influenced by, what happens in Karnataka’s state capital, Bangalore. Many of the recent GM protests against agricultural biotechnology have taken place in Karnataka. State politicians have also jumped onto pro- or anti-GM bandwagons.

In 1989 India established a regulatory system – built around a hierarchy of expert committees – for the import, testing and commercialisation of genetically engineered material. A tight network of people have managed the regulatory process and allowed relatively few opportunities for wider debate.

The drawn-out approval process for Bt cotton has been multi-tiered and complex. Debates have been had over the effectiveness of the technology, the changing nature of agriculture, multinational control of agriculture, the role of the state in a federal system and the relevance of regulation in post-reform India.

The author describes how:

• With the opening-up of the economy and the encouragement of external investment in biotechnology, biosafety regulation is one area retained by central government.
• Some commentators claimed that regulatory delays were orchestrated by pesticide companies with a vested interest in maintaining sales to cotton growers, while others saw the delays as a result of national competition with a foreign multinational.
• While Delhi regulators were deliberating, many farmers across a number of states began reaping the benefits of illegally obtained Bt cotton - thereby proving the market demand for the product.
• Formal approval of the commercial production of Bt cotton on a three-year trial basis in 2002 prompted an explosion of studies, each competing for press attention and demonstrating different ‘results’ in support of both the pro- and anti-GM lobby.

The Bt cotton story in India shows that regulation based on a simplistic technical formula – as often advocated by development agencies in ‘capacity building’ exercises – is unworkable in practice. More effective regulation requires an opening up of debate around a wider set of issues, rather than constraining discussion only to a narrow set of risk concerns. Building confidence in and legitimacy for biosafety regulations requires forms of accountability from outside closed science-industry policy networks. Regulations must therefore be negotiated as part of deliberations around a wider range of issues and across a larger group of stakeholders if they are to have any purchase.

Source(s):
‘Regulatory manoeuvres: the Bt cotton controversy in India’ by Ian Scoones, IDS Working Paper No. 197, Biotechnology Policy Series No. 14, Institute of Development Studies, August 2003 Full document.

Funded by: Rockefeller Foundation

id21 Research Highlight: 6 May 2004

Further Information:
Ian Scoones
Institute of Development Studies
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9RE
UK

Tel: 44 (0)1273 606261
Fax: +44 (0)01273 621202/691647
Contact the contributor: I.Scoones@ids.ac.uk

Institute of Development Studies (IDS), UK

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