Darryl D’Monte, Indian writer and journalist, specialized in environmental issues.
The leadership of an Indian farmers’ movement against transgenic crops says it embodies Gandhian principles but critics wonder whether it is being manipulated
In December 1998, when farmers in the south Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka torched cotton plants bred with knowhow provided by the U.S. chemical multinational Monsanto, their activism was cited internationally as an example of grassroots Third World opposition to genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Their action against the plants, which were being tested for their resistance to pests, won particular note from Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI), which has been at the forefront of the worldwide movement against GMOs and coined the term “Terminator Technology”.
The farmers belonged to the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangh (KRRS), a movement that regards the spread of transgenic breeds as “a new imperialist assault” on the Third World. Today the KRRS claims to have 10 million members in Karnataka, whose total population is 60 million.
This was not the first time that the KRRS had taken direct action against a multinational seed business. In 1992, for example, its members occupied and ransacked the offices of the giant U.S. seed company Cargill, in Bangalore, the state capital, and its administrative building in Bellary.
The KRRS was formed in 1980. Its founding president, Prof M.D. Nanjundaswamy, told the Courier that at first “the farmers tackled conventional grievances like debts, agricultural prices and discriminatory taxes. Within a year, however, they had spontaneously developed a comprehensive ideology to address issues raised by Green Revolution technology.”
D.S. Kalmat, a farmer from Sindhanoor, a village in Karnataka’s Raichur district, where Monsanto’s GM cotton was tried out on a tiny quarter-acre plot, described for the Courier some of the events leading up to a crop-burning operation.
Outflanking traditional political parties
“We had read many articles against genetically modified varieties,” he said. “Prof Nanjundaswamy telephoned me in December 1998 to find out where the trial was being conducted. We discovered that the seeds had been provided by an Indian company. The government’s Agriculture Department had no information about the trial, and the farmer himself had no idea of its implications. He was willing to co-operate with us till the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh [a movement affiliated to the party heading India’s coalition government], asked him to resist any action by our organization. Then Prof Nanjundaswamy arrived with two activists from Spain and Germany and we burned the crop.”
Kalmat was one of 400 farmers, half of them from Karnataka, who in May 1999 went on a month-long trip to Europe organized by the KRRS to press their case. “An International Caravan travelled through Europe and was in Cologne to protest at the European Union Summit and the G8 conference,” says Nanjundaswamy.
Opposition environmental movements like the KRRS have often outflanked India’s traditional political parties. For example, no party in any Indian state has come out openly either for or against GMOs. The mainstream parties have excessively rigid structures and rely on their own farmers’ organizations, which are reluctant to launch spontaneous actions and wait for diktats from the central party leadership, often based in New Delhi.
Non-party mass movements like the KRRS have often shown up the shortcomings of the conventional political system and its inability to comprehend the linkages between economic liberalization and threats to freedoms on many fronts. Such groupings are much looser, ideologically and structurally, than traditional classic parties and draw their support from an assortment of farmers, urban activists, academics and sometimes international environmental NGOs.
One reason why a mass movement against GMOs has risen in India, a country where 750 million out of the total population of one billion live in the countryside, is that it is easy to whip up passions against technologies that are reminiscent of the oppressive rule of British colonialists.
Nanjundaswamy says his movement is “based on Gandhian ideology.” Mahatma Gandhi saw the Indian village as a keystone in his non-violent struggle against British domination in the first half of the 20th century.
“In the Indian village,” Gandhi wrote, “an age-old culture is hidden under an encasement of crudeness. Take away the encrustation, remove the villager’s chronic poverty and illiteracy and you will find the finest specimen of what a cultured,
cultivated, free citizen should be.”
The Gandhian lineage of the KRRS’s ideas has also been stressed by a famous Indian environmentalist, Vandana Shiva, who has given the movement much of its intellectual rigour.
For Shiva, non-violence means that “we live ecologically and at peace with all species. In India, the Earth community has never been seen to be dominated by humans. A species are part of Vasudhaiva Kutumbhakam, the Earth family. Leaving space for others is a measure of non-violence. . . . Genuine non-violence and democracy call for pluralistic coalitions and multiple responses, rather than monopolization and manipulation of movements. The horizon for activism is very wide.”
However, KRRS violence in destroying GM crops and the offices of multinationals has been criticized by hard-core Gandhians who emphasize that means are as important as ends. Nanjundaswamy defended KRRS actions against this accusation when he told the Courier that “It is similar to burning British goods during the freedom struggle. During the Quit India movement against the British, Gandhi was asked whether burning cargo trains constituted violence and he said it didn’t, unlike passenger trains.”
Rhetoric and symbolism
Critics are also sceptical about the KRRS’s credentials as a mass movement. They say it is restricted to a few agitating farmers and to their urban leadership, which seeks support from the media and the courts rather than organizing action by even relatively small numbers of farmers who tend to be among the better-off, with larger holdings. They also point out that the KRRS has a traditional hierarchical structure, with a President, two General Secretaries and a Treasurer in Bangalore, and that it is dominated by its founder, who is said to behave autocratically. They also maintain that the complexities of GM crops are in any case usually beyond the comprehension of the peasant. They point out that Monsanto spokespersons in India cite other Indian farmers’ organizations which have enthusiastically supported the introduction of GMOs.
As for last year’s European trip, the KRRS leadership emphasized that the farmers paid their own air fares, though it is hard to imagine poor peasants being able to do this. Obviously these were comfortably placed farmers, although Kalmat, who owns just 6 acres, denies there are any of these in Karnataka because of land reforms.
On the whole the media have been supportive of the KRRS, which is portrayed as David battling against Goliaths which are often backed by the state and powerful multinationals. It is certainly true that much of the rhetoric raised against these technologies, and Monsanto and Cargill in particular, is couched in nationalist terms. Demonstrations against multinationals often attract nation-wide TV coverage. The media are always keen to sniff out conspiracies, and the threat to farmers and food security from powerful Western commercial interests is the stuff of many stories, not all of them
accurate.
In some ways neo-Gandhian movements like the KRRS are open to accusations of being high on rhetoric and symbolic action but low on delivering the goods in international and national fora. From all accounts, leaders like Nanjundaswamy are today somewhat isolated and may not be able to sustain a movement against GM crops and the introduction of other farm technologies into India for much longer.
Curtessy- http://www.unesco.org/courier/2000_01/uk/dossier/intro07.htm
