Mangina Venkateswara Rao

M. V. Rao is the former vice chancellor, Acharya N G Ranga University, Hyderabad, India. He is Chariman of the Andhra Pradesh Netherlands Biotechnology Programme Committee. He's a former consultant to the World Bank and a former special director general, Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). He is on the board of trustees of the International Rice Research Institute, Manila, Philippines, and is an external panel expert at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, Mexico. He's also Chairman of the Biotechnology Programme Committee, Biotechnology Unit, Institute of Public Enterprise, Hyderabad.

The biologist and social scientist, Tom Wakeford, reports how MV Rao has toured the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, talking about 'the marvels of GM crops'. Acting as a witness to a citizens' jury in Medak District in 2001, MV Rao announced, 'We have published a biotechnology policy which states that by the year 2007 there should be no more hunger in the state.'

Rao had to respond to concerns from poor farmers that herbicide tolerant GM crops would eliminate the manual weeding that employs hundreds of thousands of people each year, and would require mechanised sowing and harvesting, throwing yet more people out of work. Rao said, 'It is true that mechanization displaces labour, in particular women, but the changes also lead to the creation of new employment,' without specifying what sorts of jobs these would be.

The members of the jury were visibly shocked,reports Wakeford. 'Under the kind of industrialised agriculture Rao was proposing they would be driven off their land and forced by hunger to move to cities, where unemployment is already high... How could this scientist claim that by driving them off their land, and replacing their jobs with machines, their food security would be anything other than destroyed?'

In March 2003 Rao was reported to have told an audience at a national convention on 'India at the threshold - Emerging opportunities in biotechnology', that 'once the farmer saw the benefit of transgenic crops, none would be able to stop him from cultivation of genetically modified material'.

Rao prefaced this remark by saying that the following day the Indian government would be discussing allowing cultivation of Monsanto's genetically modified Bt cotton across the whole of India. In fact, when India's Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) met it rejected Monsanto's application to allow cultivation of its Bt cotton in the rest of India.

The first ever harvest of Monsanto's Bt cotton, the first GM crop to be commercialised in India, had been completed by the time Rao made his speech. It had proven a failure in the six Indian States in which its cultivation had been permitted. One of these was Andhra Pradesh, leading to calls for Monsanto to be blacklisted in the State.

One newspaper, reporting on the 'failure of the Bt cotton crop', noted, 'Inquiries in the field reveal that the attraction for Bt cotton had much to do with the kind of hype that surrounded its sale.'

Resources

Andhra Pradesh Netherlands Biotechnology Programme Mangina Venkateswara Rao, accessed 22 February 2009.