The government opening up the decision on Bt brinjal at the highest level when it has gone through the required technical and regulatory scrutiny, is not in the best tradition. Of course, in a parliamentary democracy, a minister has the power to intervene in any decision. But technically qualified and experienced ministers become a problem if they decide they must have the last word on everything.

We should either not have regulators or, if they are there under the law, treat them with the necessary amount of circumspection. The Genetics Engineering Approvals Committee was set up under a law which was designed by M S Swaminathan. Sometimes, economic, marketing and other considerations are brought in -- in my view, wrongly, because it was essentially meant to scrutinize questions of health hazards through studying environmental effects of introducing the seeds, say on water or the food chain. The economic aspects, the market would take care of. Once the technical testing has been done by the accredited agencies, through years of field testing, what is there to examine further?

Too often these days, everybody who has little understanding -- and sometimes great enthusiasm -- gets into the act, and a competitive media with less understanding and more enthusiasm takes up in the cause in two-minute, loud sound bytes.

There was a time when, for example, the courts would never take up for "scrutiny" the decisions of a regulator. I have been both Chairman of the Agricultural Prices Commission, now Commission of Agricultural Costs and Prices, and the Bureau of Industrial Costs and Prices, at a time both those bodies went through important changes. Their reports were contested. But the courts always took the view that once an autonomous technical body was seized of the matter, they would not intervene.

... contd.