Monsanto recently decided that it would stop the release of new genetically modified (GM) cotton technology because of
“uncertainty in the business and regulatory environment”. At the same time, it
was reported that GM mustard has moved closer to obtaining clearance for
commercial cultivation in India following a key committee’s favourable
assessment on issues of soil suitability and risks to health and ecology.
The issues involved are complex and contested(controversial,विवादास्पद), and the challenges and contradictions(protest,विरोधाभास) may be evident to even the most casual of
observers. Bt brinjal itself may have faded away from public discourse but the debacle(failure,पराजय) over its introduction is not something that will be forgotten
in a hurry. The contestations over Bt cotton continue to be alive in scientific
research, in experiences on the field, and in policy debates. The seed industry
has, in fact, split down the middle over a reorientation of the regulatory and
policy frameworks related to Bt cotton. And yet, for a certain prominent
section of the science and technology (S&T) establishment of the country,
the promise of GM mustard trumps all skepticism(doubt,संदेह).
Contestations
The conundrum(puzzle,पहेली) here is
not so much about the technology itself as it is about the promise that imbues
the technology and which holds the present and the future together. Building
promises is very similar to building facts, notes Cynthia Selin who studies the
intersection of science, technology and society. It is the promise and vision
of the future that then becomes key in generating a constellation(planet,नक्षत्र) that provides social and political legitimacy
on the one hand, and much-needed financial resources on the other. Bt cotton,
Bt brinjal and many technologies of the future exist through the expectations
they generate and mobilise about the future. The act of developing a
technology, therefore, is as much work inside the laboratory as it should be of
engaging with the state and society and with their various concerns and
questions. This will not be possible if the public is seen as ignorant or
ill-informed, and the activist reactionary or an agent of vested(inherent,निहित) interests. The contestation is, in fact, over the vision of
S&T, of society and, for that matter, of the future itself.
In the case of GM mustard, work was done at Delhi University
using public money provided by the government. And yet it needed the Central
Information Commissioner to say that biosafety data around GM organisms should
be available in the public domain. There are some key questions here. What
explains, for instance, this deficit of trust in the public and in democratic
mechanisms set up by the very institutions that provide the resources and the
legitimacy for these new technologies? Is it an anxiety about failure of the
technologist or of the technology itself? Or is it about the stakes involved in
the socio-technical-economic system that has been mobilised to create the
legitimacy in the first place? Does it say something about the potential
failure of an imaginary technology that is based exclusively on the promise of
the future? Can the narrative be one of hope and promise alone with no space
for doubt or the possibility of any failure at all?
Technology Vision 2035
This indeed is the premise one sees embedded in India’s Technology Vision 2035
(TV 2035), a vision produced by the Technology Information, Forecasting and
Assessment Council (TIFAC), an autonomous organisation under the Department of
Science and Technology. Released earlier this year by Prime Minister Narendra
Modi, TV 2035 charts out trajectories for society through various technologies
that will help make India a ‘developed’ country by 2035. The vision is both an
account of a future and a route to that future where technology delivers,
provides and secures. Risk and vulnerabilities(weakness,कमज़ोरिया) that are inherent to technology and therefore
to our increasingly ‘technological cultures’, as Professor Wiebe Bijker,
sociologist of science and technology, calls them, are part of the narrative in
only a very marginal manner. There is little, if any, doubt about the capacity
of technology and the different technologies to deliver the goods. TV 2035 sees
people opposed to certain technologies like nuclear and big dams as a barrier
to their dreams. These then need to be addressed through better governance and
not better technological design because “bottlenecks(problemबाधा) lie in policy and not technology”.
The past and the present, we know, are full of various dilemmas(uncertainty,दुविधा), challenges, even failures of technological promises
and yet, a substantive engagement with the ethical, legal and social (ESLA)
issues of research, development and deployment of technology is conspicuous(specific,विशिष्ट) by its virtual absence.
When failure and risk are integral parts of the technological
enterprise, why is it that technological visions like TV 2035 have such little
space for including and discussing them? It may not be a conscious choice, but
it is not an innocent one either. The particular question here is not whether
GM mustard is acceptable, which is a rather different debate. The point is to
note that the promise and the promissory visible frontstage in advocating a GM
mustard is complemented by a vision backstage that is reluctant(unwilling,अनिच्छुक) or perhaps unable to look at anything but
that promise. The ideal of the democratic in scientific and technological
choices, while desirable, is certainly not an easy one to realise because the
messy issues of the ethical, legal and social have to be dealt with both
frontstage and backstage.
Political and democratic promise
An illustration of this is visible in a situation where the technological only
appears marginal at first glance. On a visit to Kashmir, a conciliatory Home
Minister Rajnath Singh offered to engage with anyone who was interested in
finding a solution to the crisis there. “I will be staying at the Nehru Guest
House. Those who believe in Kashmiriyat, Insaniyat and Jamhooriyat are welcome,” he tweeted in an
effort to reach out to all. It was as much an invocation of the political and
the democratic promise as it was of the technological promise of modern
communications. The irony only came forth when he was asked how this message of
the Home Minister would reach the people when the government itself had blocked
Internet services.
What more can one say of the inextricable(complex,विकट) intertwining of the political and the technological with the
social, legal and ethical? The technological has promise, no doubt, but it is
not untethered to chart territories of its own making.
courtesy:the hindu
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