QUOTE: "It is clear at the moment that larger biotech multinational companies have been reasonably successful in associating their own narrow commercial interests with the broader development goals of the Indian state. It is ironic that they have achieved this at a time when many other countries, notably the very country they seem to regard as their greatest competitor, China, has made a relative retreat from its former unbridled support for the technology. China should offer a salutary lesson in this regard. The battle to define biotechnology futures and whom the technology should serve will not be won easily in India or anywhere else."

That quote comes at the end of an interesting report, 'Biotech firms, biotech politics: negotiating GMOs in India' by Dr Peter Newell. Newell is currently at the Centre for Globalisation and Regionalisation at the University of Warwick but was previously a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, U.K.

The report, published by the Institute of Development Studies, mostly looks at what Dr Newell terms "the material power wielded by some biotech firms and the level of access and influence that they are able to secure through institutional means". That influence, he says, is neatly symbolised by leading government officials with Monsanto filofaxes or Monsanto calendars upon their wall.

Of just as much interest to many GM Watch subscribers is the final section of the report which considers another "important part of the story" of the promotion of biotechnology in India: "the social construction of the commercial potential of biotechnology."

In essence the report is pointing to how the creation of the right kind of narratives or story telling - myth making even - can help "to boost perceptions of the material potential of the sector as well as ensure high levels of government interest in the industry's activities, key to sustaining institutional access."

The report suggests industry achieves a virtuous circle. The material power of the biotech industry helps to secure institutional access and to "create a conducive environment for the construction of discourses supportive of biotech development". At the same time, "the prevalence and potency of discourses about the centrality of biotechnology to India's ability to meet broader development goals of growth and food security creates space for institutional access and helps to encourage investment in the biotech sector."

What follows comes from the final section of the report. It identifies key "narratives" used to promote biotech in India as well as those who help to promote these narratives.

Among the key narratives Dr Newell lists is the same kind of "crisis narrative" that Chataway and Smith in a recent report identify as the means by which Dr Florence Wambugu has successfully promoted her biotech banana project. Wambugu they showed did this by:

1. claiming the banana as an important crop for food security
2. documenting a serious decline in yield
3. attributing the decline to infection
4. claiming "incredible" successes for her tissue cultured bananas in resolving these problems.

Chataway and Smith showed there was a lack of convincing evidence to support any of the components of this narrative. What evidence there was often suggested the direct opposite of what was claimed. Despite which, Wambugu's narrative had been highly successful in both winning backing for the project and in making it appear an "incredible" success. (see 'Smoke, Mirrors and Poverty')
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5823

In India, Dr Newell identifies as the central mantras of the crisis narrative: "declining productivity, lack of fertile lands, and rising costs of inputs". These are said to "make biotechnology the 'only way' forward."

Newell also identifies "a set of assumptions that leading firms have played a key part in constructing and embedding in policy debate":

1."Pro-poor biotechnology":

This narrative about the potential of biotechnology to meet the needs of the poor "serves to reassure investors and suspicious publics about the technology".

The irony is, says Dr Newell, that the very firms that have helped to promote this narrative have both a limited ability to deliver a pro-poor biotechnology and a professed reluctance to accept that role.

2.From IT to BT:

India's success in the field of information technology (IT) is presented as a replicable model for the successful development of biotechnology in India. Newell writes that the assumptions underlying the comparison "are in many cases ill-founded as Scoones (2002) points out, but their status as 'givens' in policy debates that gain reinforcement through constant repetition and uncritical acceptance is unquestionable."

3. The "myth of the biotech superpower", China:

"One recurrent feature of this general narrative about the enormous potential of agricultural biotechnology and the urgency with which it is to be tapped is the 'myth of the biotech superpower', China." The analysis underpinning this myth is "weak on detail", says Newell

Despite which, of course, China is used by biotech lobbyists throughout Asia to try and spur on governments to introduce pro-biotech policies in fear of missing the biotech bus or train as it pulls out of the station. Outside of India, India is often added to China to create an image of 2 Asian giants striding forward leaving the rest of Asia behind. At one time Indonesia was also woven into this narrative but had to be dropped after the disaster there with Monsanto's GM cotton that led to the company's withdrawal.

Notable actors in disseminating these biotech myths in India include newspapers like the Economic Times which provide uncritical coverage of pro-biotech hype from the following sources:

1. leading industry bodies "whose statements are taken as an adequate statement of truth in the debate in much of the mainstream media".

2. leading pro-biotech NRIs (Non-Resident Indians) such as C.S. Prakash (of AgBioWorld fame)

3. bodies such as the Foundation for Biotechnology Awareness and Education, which aim to generate beneficial publicity about the benefits of biotechnology for Indian agriculture.

India's policy makers and much of its media are clearly just as susceptible to being hoodwinked by biotech industry hype as farmers in their villages faced with company posters proclaiming the miracle of Bt cotton via pictures of smiling "farmers" endorsing the technolo