When environmental activists had voiced their apprehensions about the adverse effects of GM crops, particularly Bt Brinjal, proponents of this so-called agricultural wonder had accused them of crying wolf. But as in the unfortunate case of the fable, the wolf was for real and so was its henous act of devouring the sheep.
The fodder in this case is the indigenous matti gulla brinjal, now being precipitously pushed to the brink of extinction by the lab-generated Bt Brinjal. Activists, of course, had seen it coming. But so frenzied and vociferous was the campaign of GMO advocates that the warning cries of environmental activists was drowned in the din. Yet, the Bt Brinjal issue in Karnataka is not just one of the bigger (albeit, artificial) fish eating up the small fish. It is also one of alleged biopiracy, a legal case of criminal portents.
Only a week or so back, the Karnataka High Court dismissed petitions that were seeking quashing of criminal prosecution against senior representatives of the University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwar (UAS), agri-biotech company Mahyco, and consultants Sathguru. What this effectively meant was that legal proceedings could now be initiated against them in the Bt Brinjal biopiracy case wherein they have been accused of criminal conspiracy in using local brinjal varieties to develop the GM vegetable.
The roots of this case can be traced back to February 2010. A public hearing had been organised in Bangalore by then Union minister of state for environment and forests Jairam Ramesh. At this gathering, city-based Environment Support Group (ESG) argued that the entire process by which the proprietary product had been developed was in violation of the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, as well as the Convention on Biological Diversity, 1992. ESG described this as "an outrageous act of biopiracy."
Leo Saldanha and others of ESG furnished all the evidence that the minister might have required. These included "proof" that all endemic varieties of brinjal had been allegedly accessed by the UAS and Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Company (Mahyco), with technical support from Sathguru Management Consultants Private Limited and USAID. The allegation was serious: that the act of inserting the Bt gene (a proprietary product of Monsanto) had been undertaken without any consent of local Biodiversity Management Committees, the State Biodiversity Board and the National Biodiversity Authority.
ESG kept hammering at MPs, petitioning them to act, and act fast. Eventually, Ramesh's successor Jayanthi Natarajan reacted. She announced in Parliament in September 2011 that the NBA would follow up on the complaint as per law. But matters failed to take their own lawful course, forcing ESG to take recourse to a public interest litigation that it filed before the Karnataka High Court. The NGO sought directions to compel the regulatory agencies to move against biopiracy complaints, strengthen the regulatory processes to prevent any further acts of biopiracy, and also ensure that the Biological Diversity Act was implemented in its letter and spirit. The court acted in due course, and so did the NBA and KBB which filed a criminal complaint against the accused.
But will legal proceedings be able to save the matti gulla, protracted as they usually are? Or will it be too late by then?
