"State Science and National Specificity: Cotton to Brinjal in India" a talk by Prof. Ronald Herring at Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg > 3pm on 22nd January 2014
Time : 3:00 pm
Entry : Free (Seating on First-Come First-Served basis)
Place : Seminar Room, Library Building, Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (NMML), Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg, New Delhi - 110011
Venue Info : Events | About | Map | Nearest Metro Station - 'Race Course(Yellow Line)'
Event Description : The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library cordially invites you to a Public Lecture (in the ‘Science, Society and Nature’ series) on ‘State Science and National Specificity: Cotton to Brinjal in India’ by Prof. Ronald Herring, Cornell University, USA.
Abstract : The institutional specificity of state science in India helps explain a political puzzle: two crops carrying the same transgene – implementations of cry1Ac in Bt cotton and Bt brinjal [eggplant/aubergine: Solanum melongena] – and facing the same authorization procedures, produced opposite outcomes. India, like China, supported biotechnology as a project of the developmental state, with biosafety regulations similar to international norms but with institutional differences. In the Bt cotton case, state science vetted by the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) was more precautionary than farmers (and State governments), but the biosafety regime proved incapable of detecting or preventing introduction of transgenic cotton before official authorization. State science on cotton was attacked as dangerously inadequate by a coalition of forces in civil society, but spread to virtually universal adoption by farmers. Bt brinjal was approved by the GEAC after nine years of testing, but the Minister of Environment over-ruled the GEAC. Further the government imposed a moratorium on Bt brinjal and promised new regulatory authority for biotechnology. Critics argue that this amounts to a downgrading of the GEAC. Agricultural biotechnology in India illustrates both common and divergent dimensions of contentious politics around the adequacy of state science for risk governance. How states authorize institutions to produce and vet science in this domain exhibits variance that matters in explanations of what crops can be grown, traded, and consumed – where and under what conditions. Trajectories of two crops converge in illustrating how variations in national specificity of state science matter politically in interaction with variations in political ecology of agriculture and national interests. Among these dimensions is the fault line between the developmental state and the precautionary state.
Speaker : Prof. Ronald Herring is Professor of Government at Cornell University, where he has served, inter alia, as Director of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, John S. Knight Professor of International Relations, Chair of the Department of Government and Director of the South Asia Program. Interests include agrarian political economy [e.g. land to the Tiller: The Political Economy of Agrarian Reform in South Asia]; ethnic politics [e.g. Carrots, Sticks and Ethnic Conflict with Milton Esman]; biotechnology and development [e.g. Transgenics and the Poor]; and class theory [e.g. Whatever Happened to Class with Rina Agarwala]. He was with Ken Roberts team leader of the three-year project on “Contentious Knowledge: Science, Social Science and Social Movements," at the Institute for the Social Sciences. He is currently editor of the new Oxford Handbook of Food, Politics and Society.
Related Events : Talks | SciTech
Entry : Free (Seating on First-Come First-Served basis)
Place : Seminar Room, Library Building, Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (NMML), Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg, New Delhi - 110011
Venue Info : Events | About | Map | Nearest Metro Station - 'Race Course(Yellow Line)'
Event Description : The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library cordially invites you to a Public Lecture (in the ‘Science, Society and Nature’ series) on ‘State Science and National Specificity: Cotton to Brinjal in India’ by Prof. Ronald Herring, Cornell University, USA.
Abstract : The institutional specificity of state science in India helps explain a political puzzle: two crops carrying the same transgene – implementations of cry1Ac in Bt cotton and Bt brinjal [eggplant/aubergine: Solanum melongena] – and facing the same authorization procedures, produced opposite outcomes. India, like China, supported biotechnology as a project of the developmental state, with biosafety regulations similar to international norms but with institutional differences. In the Bt cotton case, state science vetted by the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) was more precautionary than farmers (and State governments), but the biosafety regime proved incapable of detecting or preventing introduction of transgenic cotton before official authorization. State science on cotton was attacked as dangerously inadequate by a coalition of forces in civil society, but spread to virtually universal adoption by farmers. Bt brinjal was approved by the GEAC after nine years of testing, but the Minister of Environment over-ruled the GEAC. Further the government imposed a moratorium on Bt brinjal and promised new regulatory authority for biotechnology. Critics argue that this amounts to a downgrading of the GEAC. Agricultural biotechnology in India illustrates both common and divergent dimensions of contentious politics around the adequacy of state science for risk governance. How states authorize institutions to produce and vet science in this domain exhibits variance that matters in explanations of what crops can be grown, traded, and consumed – where and under what conditions. Trajectories of two crops converge in illustrating how variations in national specificity of state science matter politically in interaction with variations in political ecology of agriculture and national interests. Among these dimensions is the fault line between the developmental state and the precautionary state.
Speaker : Prof. Ronald Herring is Professor of Government at Cornell University, where he has served, inter alia, as Director of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, John S. Knight Professor of International Relations, Chair of the Department of Government and Director of the South Asia Program. Interests include agrarian political economy [e.g. land to the Tiller: The Political Economy of Agrarian Reform in South Asia]; ethnic politics [e.g. Carrots, Sticks and Ethnic Conflict with Milton Esman]; biotechnology and development [e.g. Transgenics and the Poor]; and class theory [e.g. Whatever Happened to Class with Rina Agarwala]. He was with Ken Roberts team leader of the three-year project on “Contentious Knowledge: Science, Social Science and Social Movements," at the Institute for the Social Sciences. He is currently editor of the new Oxford Handbook of Food, Politics and Society.
Related Events : Talks | SciTech
"State Science and National Specificity: Cotton to Brinjal in India" a talk by Prof. Ronald Herring at Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg > 3pm on 22nd January 2014
!["State Science and National Specificity: Cotton to Brinjal in India" a talk by Prof. Ronald Herring at Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg > 3pm on 22nd January 2014]()
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Wednesday, January 22, 2014
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