Gandhi's mistake, Gunnar's too; and a response

Gandhi's mistake, Gunnar's too; and a response by Sauvik Chakraverti

The Indian Express 10 December 1996

Going through Gandhi, one sees how his mind was working on the confusing question of technology - boon or bane? In Young India, November 13, 1924, he attacked machinery: "Helps a few to ride on the backs of millions". He warned that 'the machine should not tend to make atrophied the limbs of man'. And he made an 'intelligent exception' of the Singer Sewing Machine because it had 'love at its back': Mr Singer saw his wife labouring over her sewing and invented a device that would save her trouble! Gandhi approved.

And he was honest about his confusion a long time later: In Community Service News, September-October 1946, he said: "As a moderately intelligent man, I know man cannot live without industry. Therefore, I cannot be opposed to industrialisation. But I have a great concern about introducing machine industry. The machine produces too much too fast, and brings with it a sort of economic system which I cannot grasp."

Why is it so difficult to grasp what machinery does? Only because we look at immediate - and not long-term consequences. Industry - Gandhi agrees - is a basic human impulse: we all strive to do whatever we do such that we save effort. Machines do the same. If they were bad, we would all be unemployed, our limbs atrophied, and we would yearn to be back in the Stone Ages, when we could have been much more active. But the obvious fact is that machines have raised production, wages, the standard of living and the sum total of human life on Planet Earth.

To examine the question, we look, like Henry Hazlitt did, at what happens when a new machine enters the factory of an overcoat manufacturer. Since it raises productivity, it displaces, say, 25 per cent of his workforce. This is more than what has been employed in manufacturing the machine itself. But look at the long-term consequences.

In a few years the machine `pays for itself. It has saved more than it was worth. These excess savings come to the man who bought it, who can either reinvest in his business, invest elsewhere or spend it thereby adding to employment. Further, the machine would probably have reduced costs in manufacture, giving the leader in introducing it an edge over his rivals.

Today, technophobic arguments are still heard all over the world. The anti-word is 'automation'. It is bad, and it reduces employment. The automobile industry is one in which automation is greatly opposed. Here is an industry
which has mechanised itself greatly, and the statistics are telling. In the US: 1910 - 140,000 workers; 1920 - 250,000; 1930 - 380,000; 1973 - 941,000.

Evidence indicates that the khadi philosophy is seriously wrong. It cannot be a way of either increasing employment or national wealth. It can, at best, create a constituency. What it will not offer this constituency is a means by which their produce gets treated as art - as hand-work should be considered - instead of a subsidised, protected something that needs the state to shelter it from the machine. It does not call for the artistic pride of the weaver. It asks for his submission to state patronage under the aegis of Gandhians whose only claim to fame is that they worship their God without original - or even critical - thinking.

What is surprising is that a Nobel Laureate in Economics (1974) is committed to the same error. Gunnar Myrdal, shortly before he won the prize, wrote that machines which increased output should not be introduced into underdeveloped countries because they 'decrease the demand for labour. Can this be for real? At a time when Malaysia has decided it will be 'developed' by 2020 (Mahathir drives a car numbered 2020!), how can we languish between socialism, and the unintelligent economics of a Nobel Laureate who has been hugely felicitated by the Indian state.

We live in times when even the existence of an intellectual-moral elite is doubtful - forget its capacity to guide the destiny of millions. Good economics and sound political science can offer some respite. This will never happen unless we are willing to sift through the heap of ideology we lug around and discard whatever is false.

Is This 'An Occasion to Celebrate'?

Is This 'An Occasion to Celebrate'? By Sauvik Chakraverti - August 27, 2003 12:00 AM

My friend Sunondo has four children. I asked him which one he loved the most and he said the youngest one. Now, this is contrary to Carl Menger's law of diminishing marginal utility, which holds that the more we have of anything, the less we love it. So, if it was cake you were consuming, the first slice would be heaven, but by the fourth you would be sick and want to throw the rest of cake into the waste bin. How come Carl Menger's law -- and law it is -- applies for cake and for everything else we have, but not for children?

I ask this question in a particular context: that of the so-called "population problem" which has had a host of Third World governments, including mine in India, taking out stringent policies in order to limit the number of children people have. Recently, in India, many states have debarred candidates with more than two children from contesting local elections. If every succeeding child gives us more pleasure, what sense does it make to penalize fertility?

In China, the "one-child norm" was enforced because, after several generations, there were millions of Chinese with no brothers, no sisters, no aunts, no uncles, no cousins, two parents and four grandparents. What is better for a child? A large family? Or a strong state?

The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus worried that a growing population would outstrip a society's ability to feed itself. At the time he was writing, Malthus had many eminent classical liberal economists opposing his predictions of doom. Jean Baptiste Say and Frederic Bastiat both wrote tellingly of the mistake Malthus was making: assuming technology to be constant. In modern times, the economist Lord P.T. Bauer was a prominent critic of the "population problem" and, after him, Julian Simon proved convincingly that human beings are not a problem, but the world's "ultimate resource."

The planet Earth is bountiful. There will always be an abundance of resources, including energy, so long as we allow human beings the freedom to utilize the Earth's bounty and serve the needs of mankind through the free market and the price mechanism.

However, Third World governments and the United Nations are still on the side of Malthus. The Indian Parliament, in a unanimous resolution recently passed on the 50th year of independence, asserted that population was India's biggest problem. That is, the representatives of the people were united in saying that their constituents and their children were a problem.

And as for the United Nations, recently a baby girl was born and promptly billed as India's billionth citizen. The UNFPA representative in New Delhi said in a press statement, "This is not an occasion to celebrate." What should we celebrate instead -- the fact that tens of thousands die on our unsafe streets every year?

India is an overwhelmingly young country; 96 percent of the people are below the age of 59; 74 percent are below the age of 39; and 34 percent are below the age of 15. This young country is ruled by aged rulers who believe that our babies should not have been born. What could be worse than that?

Third World governments like those of China and India, which endorse the population problem and coerce citizens into having fewer children, should be disgraced, as should the UN. Every couple in the world should be free to decide how many children they can have. And every child should be welcomed into the world. Every birth should be celebrated and every death mourned. And it is not just additional children that give us pleasure: This pleasure is multiplied when we have more and more grandchildren. Carl Menger may have been the Emperor of Economics, but his "law" certainly overlooked the issue of reproduction. So let us have more children; let every child give us increasing marginal utility; let us have more and more grandchildren too, where marginal utility is even higher, and let us bury the ghost of Thomas Robert Malthus who was, after all, a priest who disapproved of poor English people having sex.

Sauvik Chakraverti, is a winner of the Frederic Bastiat Award for journalism (2002). He was senior assistant editor at The Economic Times in New Delhi, and is the author of Antidote: Essays against the Socialist Indian State (2000), Free Your Mind: A Beginners Guide to Political Economy(2002), Antidote 2: For Liberal Governance (2003), Antidote 3: From the Hair of Shiva to Hair of the Prophet and Other Essays (in press).

Forget the WTO; Concentrate on Trade

Forget the WTO; Concentrate on Trade By Sauvik Chakraverti - January 12, 2006 12:00 AM

The failure of WTO talks in Hong Kong wasn't difficult to predict. It has been obvious for some time that vested interests have hijacked the original agenda. Instead of free trade, influential voices are promoting a different message: poorer WTO members should seek to export everything, but import nothing.

In the face of such a bald illogic, perhaps we should reiterate a simple fact: just as we produce in order to consume, so we export in order to import. And just as consumption is the most important aspect of our visit to the market, so imports are the most important part of international trade.

Developing countries, led by India, whose people are poor in part because they have been unable to import for decades, are waiting for EU concessions on agriculture before allow them to open their markets. Many have criticized the EU's intransigence on the issue. And they should. But many others, quite rightly, have asked developing nations to look at Hong Kong's example of unilateral free trade and draw important lessons from it. Indeed, developing countries like India should proceed forthwith to free trade unilaterally -- even if the US and EU continue with protectionism and subsidy of agriculture.

Unilateral free trade is a very good idea for a huge country such as India. If subsidized grain enters the market, poor marginal farmers, subsistence agriculturists and day laborers get cheap food. They will move away from subsistence farming as grain will be cheaper to buy in the market. They will move 'from subsistence to exchange', in Peter Bauer's words, and integrate themselves with the urban exchange economy. Instead of grain, Indian farmers will produce fruits and vegetables or even flowers -- solid cash crops. And this benefit will be paid for by US and EU taxpayers.

Indian farmers are also consumers. Farmers should look not only at what crop they will sow or where they will sell it, but also at the more important question of what they will buy with their money. The personal possessions of every poor Indian will record a quantum jump -- and this is the only true measure of the 'wealth of nations'.

People trade, not nations

So why is this so difficult to understand? On a simple level, trade talks of any kind -- multilateral or bilateral -- are doomed to failure because they occur between nations, while it is individuals who actually trade in the market. When individuals trade "reciprocity'" is meaningless. We never make it a point to buy from those who buy from us. A butcher does not go to the tailor who buys his cuts. He simply sells his cuts and goes to the best tailor that his money can buy. Buying and selling are independent decisions, and we seek benefit in both -- but separately. When reciprocity does not exist between individuals, what hope can there be to find it between nations?

In view of this argument -- and the dismal hijacking of the WTO by other political interests -- one is tempted to propose a radical solution: the WTO should be abandoned altogether. Nations and their governments will only get in the way of trade and cause economic losses all around. Each privilege they grant a few producers will in turn be a punishment that will rain down on the majority of consumers. If India opens up its borders to trade unilaterally, the developed world will benefit too, and the global recession that looms will have a softer impact when it arrives. Thus, the entire world stands to gain if more poor nations adopt free trade unilaterally

Indians should see their 2000-mile long coastline as a huge, unutilized economic asset. With free trade, great trading cities will mushroom all along the twin coastlines. Both Hong Kong and Singapore prospered because of their harbors. In China, it is the coast that is taking the lead. The same will happen to India if trade is made freer.

Fifteen years of 'liberalization' have convinced Indians of the need for free markets. Those who want free trade are upset that WTO talks are stuck. They have long endured protectionism at the hands of the Indian state. To these people, my message is: don't expect free trade as a result of government initiative. The government will only try to sell favors and Indian businessmen are notorious favor-seekers. Call for free trade as a removal of all state interference in the global market. That is, call for unilateral free trade. The rest will fail to follow at their own peril.

Sauvik Chakraverti is a journalist based at the Centre for Civil Society in New Delhi He is author ofArticles Against the Indian Socialist State and For Liberal Governance.

The Illiberal Democracy of India

The Illiberal Democracy of India By Sauvik Chakraverti - February 27, 2006 12:00 AM

Indians often boast that theirs is "the world's largest democracy", but electoral politics in India offers the voter surprisingly little choice. The Indian voter can choose between the socialist, dynastic Congress party; the Hindu nationalist BJP; and the Communists. Tweedledee, tweedledum and tweedledumber. None of these parties is liberal in a free market sense. Currently, voters are stuck with the Congress party, which is stuck with Communists in a coalition.

At the last election, neither Manmohan Singh, the current prime minister, nor Sonia Gandhi, currently head of the Congress party, could generate a clear majority. As a result, the Congress is in office only with support from India's Communists. This support has meant that every liberal policy option is vetoed by the Communists, who decry the "crisis of bourgeois rule" in India.

But there is something more fundamentally illiberal in India's democracy than the current parliamentary arrangement. Indian liberals are legally barred from forming parties and contesting elections, because legislation has decreed that all "recognized" parties must swear by India's socialist constitution. This is reflected in legislation and has enormous consequences for the quality of electoral politics in India.

Take the current situation: in all other ways, the situation is ripe for a liberal, pro-market party. In the past 15 years the ordinary Indian has seen ample evidence of the benevolence of market forces and the malevolence of statism. For example, long distance phone charges have plummeted, as have airfares, as private companies have been allowed in. In areas like consumer electronics and automobiles, Indians now have quality, choice and low prices. A newly formed liberal party could have a go at translating this positive experience into electoral victory, if given a chance, and could thereby free the rest of the economy. But this would require the liberalization of the political sphere, through the repeal of restrictive legislation.

The failure to embrace markets has immediate consequences for social cohesion. As is commonly known, the inability of socialist policies to help the poor in neighbouring Nepal has meant that many have opted for armed insurrection, based on Maoist thinking.

Less well known, in many states of India in dense forests there are alarmingly frequent reports of "Naxalite" activity. The term is used to describe armed revolutionaries who routinely attack and kill police to carry away their guns. As with Peru's misguided Shining Path guerrillas, these rebels need to be weaned away from violence and ultra-left thought by liberals offering them market solutions, like property rights and free trade. If this does not happen soon, social decay will continue.

Liberalism also needs to be allowed to enter the educational system, hitherto exclusively the domain of Marxist professors. Westerners have hailed the current government's stress on education, but the real danger is that this education will consist only of socialist and communist propaganda.

If the political sphere is liberalized, then liberal ideas will float in the open, liberals will be heard, liberal policy options will be mentally weighed by the people -- and then only will the contents of state education be challenged. The liberalization of politics will lead to the liberalization of the mind of the average Indian.

Many years back a group of Mumbai liberals petitioned the courts, challenging the restrictive legislation that reserves India's democracy for the illiberal parties that hold sway today. This has been pending hearing for almost a decade. It is time pressure is built towards securing a speedy hearing of this petition. It is only through liberal politics that India's future can be secured.

Two Indias?

Two Indias? By Sauvik Chakraverti

March 15, 2006 12:00 AM

When in India, President Bush cited a range of initiatives for U.S.-India cooperation and touched on ideals the two nations should seek to work towards. Of course, the President has his own foreign policy goals to pursue and the ideas he described were noble. But he could have been talking about a different country. If we look at Indian foreign policy, its nuclear industry and the weak link between freedom and democracy, we can see how far India must go to match such lofty rhetoric.

Nuclear energy is a state monopoly in India and helping this sector strengthens the Government's hand in power generation. Indians are plagued by power cuts as a result of state intervention in this industry. Further, "safeguards" have little meaning in India where there are no tort laws. If there were a nuclear accident, no Indian would receive compensation. The Bhopal industrial disaster, for example, occurred in the mid-80s. Until now, precious few have received anything. Indians routinely die from building disasters, adulterated food and medicine and the like — but rarely receive any relief from the law of torts.

The President also spoke of cooperation on defense. Once again, this is a fine idea in theory. The President spoke widely of multi-role combat aircraft, helicopter gunships and other high-tech initiatives. The truth is that India's defense establishment is hopelessly corrupt. They continue wars where no wars are necessary. Rajiv Gandhi was charged with receiving kickbacks when Swedish Bofors guns were purchased for the Indian army. Recently, India's Defense Minister was implicated in a shameful scandal, when it was discovered that kickbacks were paid for purchases of U.S. coffins for soldiers killed in the Kargil war.

As far as the senselessness of India's security establishment is concerned, the 25-year-old war with Pakistan on the frozen wastes of the Siachen glacier is a good example. I was close to Siachen once: it was -40 degrees Celcius in the sun! If we auctioned off the entire area, no one would offer a penny for it. But India has been spending over 300 million rupees every day for over 25 years in this senseless war. When the war began, we were informed that the 'strategic' goal was to command the heights dominating the proposed Karakoram highway. (William Dalrymple's In Xanadu recounts his travel from Pakistan to China by bus over the Karakoram highway 10 years ago.) India would do better to build its own highway in the region than fight this war, but it may be that the defense establishment is merely interested in budgets, rather than any serious security concerns.

After all, over a million Indians are killed every year on the unsafe streets of India and millions more are seriously injured. Thus, the 'security' concerns of the Indian citizen are very different from those of the Indian state.

President Bush's speech in New Delhi spoke of the link between 'democracy' and 'freedom'. Again, these are laudable ideas. Yet, despite India being a democratic nation, the Economic Freedom of the World Index rates India close to the bottom and the U.S. close to the top. The title of Deepak Lal's book on India,A Repressed Economy, says it all. Indians were freer under feudal lords and even the colonial Brits than they are today. Feudal lords routinely fell in love with dancing girls; but dancing girls have been outlawed by legislative fiat today. Democracy and freedom doesn't always go hand in hand, and nowhere is this truer than in contemporary India.

Free trade between the people of India and the people of America is desperately important for average Indians. Indians would benefit from buying used cars, buses and trucks. Indeed, Indians would even buy insurance write-offs, which could be cheaply repaired in India. Americans would benefit from better prices for their old cars, and lower insurance costs as well. Taking the point further, Indians would also buy used refrigerators and television sets. Cheap American wine would also be a big hit, and yield public health benefits, for Indians are killing themselves with the hard liquor they are forced to drink today. There are a host of trading gains to be made, for the benefit of both ordinary Indians as well as ordinary Americans, which citizens on both sides are being denied. Instead, the corrupt and repressive socialist-communist Indian establishment — and its powerful bureaucratic elite — remain as strong as ever.

Catallaxy, key to an Open Society

Catallaxy, key to an Open Society by Sauvik Chakraverti

For a market society, the appropriate political value is not a sense of ‘community’. Rather, it is ‘catallaxy’

The political value of “community” is collectivist. Community lies at the root of communism, socialism and nationalism. It stood behind Nazism, apartheid and white supremacy. It justified “ethnic cleansing” in Eastern Europe recently and promotes immigration barriers worldwide. In India, the idea of community lies behind the Hindutva and Marathi manoos agendas. The scheming politician loves a homogeneous community.

Yet, community is a bogus value in a market society, which, in order to succeed, must be urban and cosmopolitan. Community makes sense in a village comprising one caste or in a small, exclusive tribe where everyone knows everyone else. It makes no sense in a city where individuals operate, peacefully trading with complete strangers. For such a society, the appropriate political value is “catallaxy”, which means an open trading arena. But first, a little about this word.

In the 20th century, Austrian economists alone used the word “catallactics” to denote the science of exchange. In Ludwig von Mises’ Human Action(1949), the section dealing with traditional economic issues is titled “Catallactics”. Derived from the Greek word for “exchange”, Mises mentions that catallactics was first used by the British economist and theologian Bishop Whately in the previous century, which means the word was well known to the classical political economists. Mises’ student from his Vienna years, Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek, confessed to having “fallen in love with this word”, for which he discovered two additional meanings that the ancient Greeks ascribed to it: first, “to welcome into the community”; and second, “to turn from enemy into friend”. These connotations of the word indicate its importance to an Open Society.

The ancient Greeks traded and mingled with all nations around the Mediterranean. Their societies employed special people, called xenos, or “guest-friend”, who looked after foreigners and their wares as they went about their trades in the Greek city-states. At the pinnacle of their glory, in Athens, they achieved an Open Society, as Pericles’ “Funeral Oration” teaches us. There was no “xenophobia”, as in our modern world.

The success of any market society lies in its openness and inclusiveness, and not in a narrow sense of community. There is no “chief” issuing commands to all traders. A market society is not a “command economy”. Such a society is strongly individualistic, wherein each trader takes independent decisions and is responsible only to himself for his own gains and losses. Further, such a society is marked by “impersonality”. There are good manners, yes, but there is no personal relationship between trader and customer.

Going deeper, a market society is characterized by “competitive individualism”: we all compete as sellers; we all compete as buyers. We all realize that we prosper when this catallactic competition is at fever pitch. We gain when there are a huge number of sellers as we go to buy. We gain when there are a huge number of buyers as we go to sell. The bazaar that is humming with catallactic energy is the crowded bazaar, not the vacant one. Thus, we all realize that openness matters. A successful catallaxy is open to strangers from all parts of the globe and hospitable towards them. It is not a closed community.

As we witness the economic decline of Western nations, we must realize that the primary cause of this decline is their misplaced faith in community. All of them operate “national economies” with national fiat currencies, central banking, immigration barriers, protectionism and rampant interventionism. Socialist India follows the same path.

However, the great thing about India is that all our cities are cosmopolitan. They are truly “melting pots” of humanity. This is our inherent strength. If we are to use it to get ahead of the competition, we must ditch the political value of community and opt instead to become a nation of free-trading and self-governing cities and towns—all of them catallaxies that are open to strangers. We must do away with trade and migration barriers. Our bazaars must be possessed of the highest degree of catallactic energy to be found anywhere in the world. Our biggest industry must be tourism.

Hayek defines community as “a common recognition of the same rules”. Such rules can be religious or tribal—or they can be secular. In an open catallaxy, only one rule need be recognized by all: private property. Happily enough, as Hayek also points out, this rule has been the cornerstone of open markets for millennia. Whenever people exchange, they exchange properties. Thus, most trade takes place without legal paperwork of any kind. Hayek said that the rule of private property operates in all of us “between instinct and reason”. We follow the property rule without knowing why. We have given up the instinct to plunder, to snatch and grab—but we don’t know why.

Thus, there is a “natural order” in all cosmopolitan open catallaxies. Posses of armed policemen are not required to “maintain order” in any crowded marketplace anywhere in the world. This order exists on its own. Without the “narrow domestic walls” of community, the idea of catallaxy solves the social problem for all individuals, while also uniting humanity in a rational, natural order.

Sauvik Chakraverti is an author and columnist. He blogs at Sauvik-antidote.blogspot.com

Comments are welcome at theirview@livemint.com

Bt Cotton Should Be Formally Approved: Interview/ C. S. Prakash

Bt Cotton Should Be Formally Approved: Interview/ C. S. Prakash

Biotechnology is a fast growing area filled with controversy. Is it the answer to Malthusianism? Or is it a Frankenstein's monster? To get answers to these questions, Sauvik Chakraverti spoke to Professor C S Prakash, who teaches plant biotechnology at Tuskegee University. He also advises the government of India on these matters. Excerpts from an exclusive interview:

*What is your reaction to what happened in Gujarat regarding the release of Bt cotton seeds?

- It was inevitable. For two years, the Indian regulatory authorities have been dragging their feet on the issue. On June 19, they had absolutely no logical, rational or scientific reason to say 'No'. My reaction is of mixed delight. But I would not like to condone any illegal cultivation of unapproved biotech crops, since it undermines consumers' confidence. The situation the government finds itself in is like finding your daughter pregnant. There is no other choice but to get her married. So, I do hope that the use of Bt cotton will be formally approved and that farmers will not have to go for contraband seeds.

* Do you think that the popular adoption of genetically modified seeds in Gujarat is something that was waiting to happen in India? Did you expect the farmers to adopt Bt cotton, given all the protests and demonstrations we have seen around the world?

- Definitely. It is just that farmers have finally spoken out. We knew all along that, given a choice of superior solutions, farmers make rational decisions, based on simple economics and cost-benefit analyses. Quite rationally, they are willing to bear additional costs if these bring them substantial returns.

* What do you think explains the contrast between the reaction of environmentalists overseas and in India? While internationally they have gone around uprooting trial fields, in India they have not entered any field planted by farmers.

- It is surprising that Indian environmentalists are now so quiet. Earlier, they maintained that BT is not good for Indian farmers, that the technology has no value, and that we have to preserve the existing system of saving seeds for the next planting. The fact is, these environmentalists have absolutely no knowledge of farming and do not speak for farmers. So, when real farmers get involved, environmentalists do not have any say.

* Did the company that released this BT variety violate IPR regulations?

- No, they did not since the patent has not yet come into effect. What they did violate is the bio-safety regulation of the Indian government. Under it, any genetically modified product requires a local approval before it can be released into the environment or commercialised. India has a two-step approval process. We have six years of Indian data on Bt cotton, and so far its agronomic performance has been spectacular. There is not one single safety incident of any concern. The irony is that India imports over ten lakh bales of cotton, much of it being Bt cotton from such places as Australia and China. It is absurd that we force our farmers to spend on pesticides, given the often irresponsible manner in which these are used, rather than just approve Bt cotton.

* The introduction of genetically-modified products has been slow since existing food and environmental regulation is based on the precautionary principle. If this principle were to be thrown to the wind, what is the worst case scenario?

- The worst case scenario would be the introduction of minute levels of allergens into food. Take the case of peanuts. Some people are highly allergic to them and may have a fatal reaction from eating just one. Now assume a genetically-modified chickpea, in which one peanut gene has been introduced. A peanut-allergic person would have to eat about a tonne of chickpea to get the same level of protein present in a single peanut. In fact, there is far more danger in eating normal food.

The reluctance of the Indian authorities to approve Bt cotton has interesting historical parallels. For instance, when the first motor car was introduced in England, the British government ruled that the speed limit should be five miles an hour. Moreover, regulations required someone to walk in front of each car and announce its imminent arrival. Needless to say, the development of the motor car was blocked in Britain.

Similarly, electric lights were banned in Britain for thirty years after they were first introduced, due to the gas industry lobby. Italy has absolutely little or no corporate bio-medical research, due to overt regulation, despite its robust economy and high per capita income. Mindless regulation is similarly killing agricultural biotechnology in Europe.

Everything has a risk, but that the risk must be put into its proper framework. About 300,000 children die in India every year due to rota virus, which causes dysentery and diarrhoea. A vaccine was developed in the National Institute of Health, Washington, but was abandoned this year since it caused rashes in few US children.

In the United States, just one or two children are hit by rota virus every year. The risks in vaccinating against this virus are, therefore, unacceptably high. It is outrageous that the Americans shelved the vaccine, given that in India the risk factor is irrelevant. Every society must look at risk for itself.

* Please explain the BT concept for a lay reader.

- BT stands for 'Bacillus thuringiensis', which is a common soil bacterium. This bacterium has been used as an organic pesticide for about forty years. When you spray the bacillus onto the plant, caterpillar larvae eat it. The bacillus is only toxic to caterpillar larvae. It does not kill butterflies, beetles or bees. However, the bacillus never caught on commercially as a pesticide, because it gets degraded in the sun. Farmers have to keep on spraying all the time. Genetic engineering came along and took the Bacillus thuringiensis gene and put it straight into the relevant crop plant. So the plants produce the protein, instead of it having to be sprayed on.

*So, if BT was sprayed and the product was sold, it would be called organic food?

- Ironically, yes.

* What about the growth of resistance to other pests?

- If Bt cotton is used too much, pests may become resistant to it. This, in any case, is likely to happen even with spraying or antibiotics. This is why we are telling farmers that 10 per cent of their crop should continue to be regular cotton. Pests can feed on that and not be compelled to adapt. This strategy seems to have worked. There are millions of acres under Bt cotton cultivation, yet no pest has developed resistance.

* What about the gene flow issue?

- Look at rice, for instance. After they discovered dwarf rice in Taiwan, every rice became dwarf because we put that gene into all popular rice varieties around the world. This is because dwarfness is a big asset in agriculture. Not one single wild rice has acquired this dwarf gene, despite thirty-five years of dwarf rice on probably 250 to 300 million hectares. The point is that dwarfness has no positive selection value in a wild rice. Even if the gene were to be there, it would just get eliminated.

So there are two ecosystems - the man made one and the wild one. The man made one began with the domestication of grain, mainly for making alcohol. The rice was shattering, so man collected a mutant where the grains did not shatter.

The seeds in the wild are always dormant, and now are germinating immediately depending on their survival mechanism. We are making sure that they do not germinate on the stock itself and also that they do not stay dormant for too long.

So we made a lot of little changes. Take the instance of corn that is in the wild, it looks like a small little pencil. But modern corn is about two foot long and big. They were all changed over ten thousand years. So, if you put most of the modern varieties of crop food plants into the wild, they would not survive for one day. It is like taking a little Chihuahua or Daschund and throwing it to a pack of wolves. It would not survive for one hour. So, similarly, except in a few instances, these new varieties are of absolutely no evolutionary significance.