Since the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee has given its nod to the commercial cultivation of Bt Brinjal after two years of extensive field trials, and the final clearance rests now only with the Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, is it prudent to hope that the debate on genetically modified crops has been settled once and for all? A speady clearance, and then large-scale cultivation of Bt Brinjal, will demonstrate how and why GM crops are more about helping the Indian farmer, than about competing with the agricultural sector of economies like the US, Argentina or China whose farmers have long enjoyed GM options.

It is one thing to subject transgenic crops and their commercial cultivation to a strict regulatory mechanism for bio-safety standards — necessary for genuinely scientific reasons — and another to buy into the rhetoric of alarmists on the one hand and votaries on the other. Those reasons are the need to assess the ecological impact of GM crops on existing vegetation in diverse environments, to ensure that the promise of higher productivity and greater resistance to pests is sustained on the fields. With edible GM items, the regulatory mechanism will be understandably stricter. But none of that has anything to do with the routine scare-mongering that critics have used to distort public perceptions of an economically indispensable, science-aided improvement. What’s more, India’s success with Bt Cotton is an object lesson in slaying the alarmist demon and also learning the continuous development of better varieties.

From a single GM crop, India is on the threshold of two, the new one its first edible one. Almost 50 other GM crops, including rice, wheat, tomato, cabbage, are in the experimental stage. An estimated 50 to 70 per cent of brinjal is destroyed by pests. The Bt Brinjal is expected to be more resistant to pests and raise yields. Farmers and consumers will welcome it, and hope the GM scope is extended soon.