Is Bt brinjal good for you?

The Genetically Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) (can't we have more feliticiously named committees?) has approved the commercial cultivation of the humble brinjal, alias eggplant alias aubergine. Of course it still requires clearance from the Ministry of Environment and Forests (where decisions will be based as much on politics as science -- perhaps more so). But the knives are out already and the habitual pulpit-thundering anti-technology naysayers like Vandana Shiva and others of her ilk, including scores of NGOs have predicted the usual gloom and doom scenario for Indian agriculture, particularly those cultivating this poor unloved vegetable.

Before we get to grips on this issue, let's get some incontrovertible facts out of the way.

• This is not the first genetically engineered seed to be sanctioned for commercial cultivation. So called Bt cotton was the first (in 2002) which at least superficially has been an unqualified success with 50% better yields and is also grown in US, China, South Africa and Australia. However, since nobody eats cotton, the issues in this regard are different from those of eggplant and have more to do with commercial, social and economic aspects. (For example, the ability of the farmer to harvest the seeds from his own crop for the next planting, rather than buying it again from the market). Consumption of genetically modified foods bring up totally different issues altogether, some of which I will discuss below.
• India is by no means a trendsetter in this regard. The US has 62.5 million ha under cultivation, Argentina has 21 million ha, Brazil has 15 million ha. India is now fourth in this list with 7.6 million ha, mostly growing cotton, followed by Canada and China. The crops grown are also more diverse -- canola, maize, soyabean, sugar beet, tomato and of course cotton.
• It is not just professional objectors like Shiva who are against transgenic crops. Even respected molecular biologist P. M. Bhargava has added his voice to this chorus.

As far as I understand, the main reasons for the worry are the following, some of them only relevant in the Indian context.

• A general belief that fiddling with the genetic structure of any food must have adverse consequences. There is unfortunately no proof of this yet -- it appears more a matter of faith. There have never been any reports of adverse health effects from the consumption of GM foods and by now the numbers of such consumers are significantly large.
• The clearance by the GEAC was done hurriedly and based on data provided by the company which markets this product -- Mahyco (Maharashtra Hybrid Seed Company) -- a subsidiary of the (evil?) multinational Monsanto. There was no independent verification of the field trials and even though Indian Governmental organisations like ICAR (Indian Council of Agricultural Research) and IIVR (Indian Insitute of Vegetable Research) were involved, the tests were superficial, the results rushed out in a hurry, and there was no transparency in the trial methodology. People like P. M. Bhargava have been particularly troubled by these aspects.
• The whole GM food control, and therefore eventually all of Indian agriculture is coming more and more under the control of multinationals like Monsanto. This is an economic issue though, not a scientific one and in this post I want to address mostly the scientific issues.

So what are these scientific issues? (I am by no means an expert on this issue and most of the information in this post comes from an excellent article by The Harvard zoologist and biologist Richard Lewontin in the New York Review of Books. However that requires a subscription to the magazine though I could send you a copy on an individual basis to avoid copyright problems.)

Human beings have been genetically modifying organisms since the domestication of plants and animals. The usual way we have been doing it for tens of thousands of years is to selectively breed those variants of a plant which have desirable qualities like better productivity or resistance to pests. These are also only done between closely related species. Moreover, this kind of "mixing" can be a bit of a hit or miss affair and while improving one aspect (say disease resistance) one might also selectively propagate a low yielding variety of the plant. Modern genetic engineering instead selectively removes the DNA corresponding to a particular gene and inserts it into a recipient's cell so that it becomes part of the recipient's genome. The 'source' DNA can belong to a distant species and in that case the resultant variety produced is called a transgenic organism.

One of the most famous cases of genetic engineering (to which nobody seems to have ever objected) is the introduction of the human insulin gene into the genome of bacteria which, subsequently, after being grown in industrial quantities produce industrial quantities of insulin that keep millions of diabetics in good health.

One of the commonest uses of trangenic DNA is to make plants resistant to pests. The Bt protein is a powerful toxin made by the bacterium Bacillus thuringensis (hence Bt) and when the gene coding for this toxin is inserted into plants, they start producing these toxins and insects trying to feed on these plants ingest these and die. The obvious issue that exercises opponents of GM crops is the effect of these toxins on human beings when they eat GM varieties of fruits and vegetables. This, along with two other issues - the disruption of the natural environment of agriculture and the development of resistant pests are the three main problems with transgenic foods. (Incidentally it is a fact not often recognised that adverse toxic health effects can also arise during conventional breeding including crosses between species that normally do not cross in nature -- in fact there are several such examples in the history of agriculture referred to in Lewontin's article).

Large scale testing by independent agencies is the only way out of these problems. Unfortunately not just in India but even in advanced countries like the US, it is often true that the data on which 'safety assessment' is based are produced not by independent federal agencies but by the the very parties who are asking for approval to distribute the new variety. This is precisely what makes the propagation and large scale production of GM foods somewhat of a risky enterprise. Self-policing is hardly calculated to inspire confidence in the minds of the general public towards the safety of transgenic varieties of food. However it is also true that in the last two decades or so, there has not been a single proven case of adverse effects directly attributable to a transgenic crop. (A close call is mentioned in the Lewontin article). Hardened weed varieties are another undesirable by-product of this genetic manipulation.

If these were the only issues on which the GM crop antagonists were fighting the battle, it would be the action of a responsible opposition. Unfortunately the movement has almost taken on the contours of a belief system based on a hardened and pathological dislike for any technological intervention in natural processes. (It's not surprising that most of the opponents of the system are also opponents of the Green revolution in India that finally abolished large scalestarvation and frequent occurrences of famine in the country and allowed India to become self sufficient in food). The poster-person of this movement is of course the well known activist Vandana Shiva. Shiva, who we are told is a former physicist, blots her copybook by making remarks (in her famous book Stolen Harvest) that have nothing to do with science. For example, that seeds and biodiversity are "gifts from nature and their ancestors" and her opposition to genetic engineering is based on "a recognition in the Isho Upanishad that the universe is the creation of the Supreme Power meant for the benefit of all creation". Further on, in the book, she talks of "the smoke from the mustard oil used to light the deepavali lamp acts as an environmental purifier." (I should confess here that I have not read the book though the above are actual quotes from there. Perhaps she is being quoted out of context! And yet, if even her best arguments have to be buttressed by this kind of pseudo scientific mumbo-jumbo, it is not a surprise that people like her do not inspire much confidence amongst most scientists). As Lewontin reports, her book is full of unexplained claims about the nature of the farm economy in India, and how biotechnology destroys it and unanalysed or distorted scientific findings, some of which are explicitly referenced in the review. As Lewontin puts it, Stolen Harvest is an opportunity squandered.

And yet, many serious scientists have questioned the wisdom of hurrying through with the clearance for Bt brinjal in India, without conducting fully independent large scale field tests. GM crops if used appropriately can be of great benefit to poor farmers in countries like India but in order to be able to sell the idea to the people of the country the Government has to do more -- if not anything else, at least to make sure that field tests are not only done fairly but also seen to be so.

Ain't kiddin'

All the students at Luolang Elementary School, a yellow-and-orange concrete structure off a winding mountain road in southern China, know the key rules: Do not run in the halls. Take your seat before the bell rings. Raise your hand to ask a question. And oh, yes: Salute every passing car on your way to and from school. And there's more where this came from.

The Indian Institute of Advanced Study

The Indian Institute of Advanced Study at Summerhill, Shimla, is housed in what used to be the Vice Regal Lodge - the summer palace of the Viceroy of India. In keeping with its colonial origins, the building is a grand colonial structure, complete with manicured gardens outside, wood panelled walls inside, wall-to-wall carpeting everywhere and a grand staircase which leads to the upper floor where the offices are located.

The Institute is primarily a social sciences institute, set up by the second President of India, Dr S. Radhakrishnan, and has a large number of visiting fellows in disciplines ranging from political science to philosophy who are encouraged to come and use their time there to study and write a book or monograph or treatise. However the present Director is a very charming forward looking person who would like to bring the social sciences and humanities closer to the sciences (remember C. P. Snow's Two Cultures ?) and therefore encourages scientists to organise meetings there. Thus a meeting on Gravity was held last year and we are organising a meeting on Particle Physics Phenomenology during the teeth-chattering cold of December. Our interaction with the Director and staff there was extremely positive and they are keen to provide all the local facilities needed to host a meeting. They prefer if some general talks are given which are understandable by the social sciences Fellows of the institute. With a guest house capacity of about

35, small meetings are easy to arrange.

The place literally oozes history. Thus, one can see the table where the partition papers were signed during the tripartite conference between the Congress, the Muslim League and the British Government. (The table is also in two parts joined together!) An earlier meeting called by Lord Wavell in the same place and attended by Nehru, Patel, Azad, Jinnah, Liaqat Ali Khan and others had ended in failure, making India's partition a certainty and there is the historic conference room where this and many other meetings among the various delegates of the political establishment took place in pre-independence India.

Magnetic Monopoles and Magnetricity

Magnetic monopoles have never been seen in nature which makes Maxwell's equations fundamentally asymmetric between electric and magnetic fields, since there is no magnetic equivalent of a single isolated electric charge.

Recently a Nature article by Bramwell et al. show that in a certain kind of magnetically frustrated material called 'spin ice' one can see evidence of 'magnetricity' - a flow of magnetic charges just like electrical charge flow, and understood in terms of a magnetic analogue of the theory of electrolytes. (The material in which this has been observed is dysprosium titanate pyrochlore). The experimentalists actually observe real magnetic currents and are hence able to measure the magnetic charge ('monopole'). This, I believe, is the first example of a system where there is perfect symmetry between electric and magnetic charges. (The popular press has occasionally reported the existence of flux tubes -- dipoles which move independently in certain magnetic materials -- as equivalent to magnetic monopole quasiparticles but the present effect I believe is different -- I would appreciate some comments on these from experts).

One should realise though that this does not change Maxwell's equations in free space. Magnetic monopoles in free space have not been observed yet, except in one un-replicated experiment by Blas Cabrera in 1982. Thus, electromagnetism text books don't need to be revised any time soon.

Are most Indian drivers retarded?

I deliberately gave a provocative and non PC title, but do read on...and you can conclude for yourself.

The road I take to office daily is dug up, ostensibly to widen it. Nothing new about that in this city, and that is probably the topic of a future post. But, as a consequence, traffic tends to creep along, sometimes slowing down to a halt altogether. At this point, a bunch of vehicles (they range from MTC buses to autos to fancy shiny cars) decide to make a break for it by getting on to the lane for oncoming traffic in order to beat the jam. Not surprisingly, they immediately block the oncoming traffic and who in turn block these vehicles from going further. The result is a complete grid lock with vehicles unable to proceed in either direction.

Now I am certain that since this happens during rush hour, the people using this stretch are the same people who use it every day to go to work. In other words, the consequences of their actions are there for them to see, day after day after day. And yet, they just don't seem to get the message! Most living creatures, presumably from guinea pigs up, learn, by dint of repetition, to avoid getting involved in an inextricable situation. But clearly not so, Indian drivers.

So what are we to conclude from this?

Marathi Asmita and me

A distinguished blogger in a recent post has deplored the attitude of some lumpen parties in Maharashtra like the MNS and Shiv Sena of trying to force-feed Marathi down the throats of unwilling residents of the state, using extra-judicial methods. In a Parthian shot he has accused me of being a fellow traveller and linked this blog to that statement.

When I clicked on that link it took me to my previous post on NCERT textbooks, leaving me totally mystified. Surely I had said nothing offensive in that post? I read it again carefully and could find nothing that would give offense to even the most thin skinned of non Maharashtrians in Maharashtra.

And then the penny dropped! (I have always been rather slow on the uptake, a trait commented on often by many of my friends and relatives...). He was referring to a long ago post of mine, which essentially defended the actions of local governments whether in Maharashtra or in Tamil Nadu, to promote the use of the local language in signage and communication. (Presumably out of laziness, he had just linked to my blog rather than to that particular post). This along with a couple of comments in the distinguished blogger's posts had been construed as defending the use of sticks and stones, fists and knuckles and other extra-judicial methods, (favourite of the above mentioned parties), as a means of forcing local culture and language on the hapless and recalcitrant non locals of the state ("North Indians" in their derogatory phrase). And it was this that had earned me the appellation of a "fellow traveller".

Tendentious reporting and conclusions are common amongst our numerous news channels and newspapers, and more so in the blogosphere, but it now seems to have affected some of our distinguished bloggers too.

NCERT Textbooks

The Times of India, which most of us in recent years have associated with fluff and half naked women, can, when it puts its mind to it, run some wonderful stories -- leaving its nearest rival here, the Hindu panting way behind. On Gandhi Jayanti day, when N. Ram and his cohorts at the Hindu have been obsessing about China's greatness and its military might, the TOI has a far more relevant, topical and interesting story on the new NCERT textbooks.

The new set of books, designed by the NCERT's primary textbook committee, creates a culturally responsive mathematics curriculum, according to the chair of the committee Anita Rampal -- "(We) have looked at math through the prism of everyday life. Instead of teaching through abstractions, the books tell real-life stories of people so that the youngsters can identify with the characters."

Thus living examples of fish, their shapes and sizes, as well as the capacity of fishing boats off Chennai's coast to teach the principles of maths. Similarly, to make the connection of a map to the aerial photo of a place, they used a photograph of India Gate and Rashtrapati Bhavan by the celebrated photographer Raghu Rai who was only too willing to give them permission to print it.

One of those feel good stories when there is so much bemoaning about the state of our education system...