Liberalisation in India relaxed several restrictions on the activities of foreign firms that operate locally. Consequently, an increasing number of multinational agricultural biotechnology companies set up operations in India. New Delhi’s biotechnology policy is now influenced by a small number of major foreign firms and local entrepreneurs with national and global connections. Smaller actors in India’s vast seed sector are only minimally engaged in debate about the ‘gene revolution’.

Research from the Institute of Development Studies explores the different corporate and policy strategies of firms in India’s biotechnology, agrochemical and seed sectors as they seek to influence the policy process. The research cautions against viewing all business interests as identical and having the same aims.  It stresses the importance of looking at divisions within the businesses and in the political alliances that firms form with the local government.

Companies and seed associations are openly involved with government in the design and implementation of regulatory frameworks, with some firms much more involved than the others. The levels of influence businesses have in this regard are closely related to corporate strategies and the types of industry mobilisation. Companies seek to shape regulations in the areas of trade, bio-safety and intellectual property protection in order to minimise government interference in their business, to secure market access and to raise the barriers to market-entry for competitors.

The researcher analyses how:

• Companies promote the view that biotechnology development is consistent with India’s national interest.
• Businesses - such as Monsanto - use a range of public relations strategies: newspaper adverts, open days, videos, workshops and partnerships with public sector institutes to produce non-commercial products, to convince a sceptical public and ensure that the benefits of biotechnology are echoed and repeated in influential media.
• The extent to which firms are involved in primary research, export their products or require protection for their products, helps to determine their political affiliations to the leading industry bodies that are active on biotechnology issues.
• Associations have different patterns of interaction with particular government agencies: while the Seed Association of India has the attention of the Ministry of Agriculture on issues of seed certification and plant variety protection, the Department of Biotechnology finds support for its pro-biotechnology position from the biotechnology firms driving the technology.
• There is rivalry between firms with interests in biotechnology and in agrochemicals: leading biotechnology companies suggest delays in approvals of their products are due to lobbying by pesticide companies that fear a loss in income if GM varieties required fewer applications of pesticides.
• Indian start-up firms are used symbolically to highlight the commercial success that biotechnology can bring to India: current policy debates emphasis their importance more than they deserve in terms of their actual contribution to the Indian economy.

In India, high levels of civil society engagement and scepticism towards scientists, government and industry combine with uncertain and disputed risks and benefits associated with biotechnology to make for a challenging operating environment. The sheer size of India’s population and market ensures it will remain a key site for biotechnology companies and anti-GM activists in the global contest over the future of biotechnology in agriculture.

In the attempt to wield maximum influence, success will depend on the respective priority that the government attaches to biotechnology promotion as opposed to bio-safety protection, to patent protection as opposed to looser systems of crop protection and whether the national interest is best served by foreign investors or domestic enterprises.

Larger biotechnology multinational companies have been reasonably successful in associating their own commercial interests with the broader development goals of the Indian state. It is ironic that they have achieved this at a time when many other countries – notably the country they regard as their greatest competitor, China – has made a relative retreat from its former unqualified support for the technology.

Source(s):
‘Biotech firms, biotech politics: negotiating GMOs in India’ by Peter Newell, IDS Working Paper 201, Biotechnology Policy Series 11, Institute of Development Studies, September 2003 Full document.

Funded by: Department for International Development, UK

id21 Research Highlight: 16 July 2004

Further Information:
Peter Newell
Institute of Development Studies
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9RE
UK

Tel: 44 (0) 1273 606261
Fax: 44 (0) 1273 621202
Contact the contributor: P.Newell@ids.ac.uk

Institute of Development Studies (IDS), UK

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