People's Democracy

AIAWU Criticises UPA Govt Policy

THE All Indian Agricultural Workers Union (AIAWU) expressed its anguish at the manner in which the UPA government is throwing the mass of the Indian people into the jaws of the multinationals to be stripped to the bone through a step by step process of dispossession and destruction.

In a statement issued on May 27, 2006 the AIAWU said that this would reduce the Indian agricultural labour and peasants to the condition of penury and bonded labour in their own land. It stated that the government has done this by virtually squandering the reserves of the PDS and allowing multinationals to buy grain cheaply in the Indian market and sell at no less than Rs 950 a quintal to the government which refuses to buy grain in the home market at prevailing prices but is prepared to pay more for imports from multinationals.

"Now, a new and dangerous measure is being proposed to facilitate the import of genetically engineered soya bean oil by amending the Rules for Manufacture, Use, Import, Export and Storage of Hazardous Micro-organism or Cells, 1989, which requires the approval of the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) for importing such products. The government now proposes to waive this for GM soya bean oil imports.

"This will not only bring ruin to our own soya bean farmers already hard-pressed by the removal of quantitative restrictions on soya beans since 1999 as a result of US pressure, but it will allow genetically engineered material for human consumption to be imported without adequate knowledge of its-after-effects and without a necessary warning on the packing of such products."

Not only are GM crops, especially those meant for human consumption, not adequately safe as yet, but their effects on neighbouring farmers’ fields through cross-pollination are hardly known. So the GEAC restriction are minimum requirements that are to be observed cannot be waived in the interests of public safety, felt the AIAWU.

"The scandalous manner in which BT cotton seeds were sold at six times the price they sell in the USA and the confirmation of kickbacks having been paid to a Cayman Island bank account as commission for the last Australian wheat imports in 1998, we believe that all legal protections of the Indian peasants and consumers are essential and should not be tampered with. No GM material, whether it is for consumption or reproduction, should be purveyed without proper testing. And even then, its packing must clearly state that genetic modification has been resorted to, so that people can choose what they want. This is the minimum that is required for our food safety."

(INN)