Regarding GM food

Nutritional, scientific and agricultural aspects have been widely discussed about GM food. It may have some more aspects.
There was an obscured piece of news which had caught my attention I don’t remember the exact source. It seems, some farmers used GM crops. And beside them there were others who did not use GM seeds. We know that GM crops have some special genes, which are patented by companies. They need to further study these genes to improve the variety, so they routinely take samples from crop. In present case too, company took samples from the GM crop. They also took some samples of neighboring non GM crop to compare. Surprisingly they found that even non GM crop had their patented genes. Farmer could not show voucher for GM seed purchase and was tried under different sections of violation of IPR, stealing and so on. Papam! That person did not understand anything. He was devastated. Later it was found that, the culprit was someone else. We know that we depend on our minor insect brothers to pollinate the flowers. They did not know anything about GM crop and transferred pollens from GM field to non-GM field.
That may be termed as stray incident but look what it has in store for us. Look at worse condition it can give rise to. It is told that brinjal has genes which are similar to many other vegetables. That means genes have greater compatibility for each other. So, patented GM brinjal gene will soon spread itself in the genetic pool of other vegetables. Then even if you don’t grow GM crop you will have to pay to GM company because the crop you grow will have the patented gene. Likewise whole of the agriculture will belong to few people and they will decide who should grow what? Can you remember Indigo farmers of Bihar, who were not allowed to grow rice and wheat but only indigo. And the price of indigo was fixed by the buyers who were also rulers. History may repeat itself. We may end up growing more corn to produce ethanol to run some BMW. Even if there is rice, only those who have money can afford it. It looks like in form of GM crop few people want to capture the most needed resource of this earth and then they can hold the whole humanity to ransom as all other commodities have done to us.
We can live without IT, banking, petrochemicals and pharma sectors or even schools and colleges, but we cannot even think of our society without agricultural. So any decision regarding agricultural has to very careful. Those farmers have to be given highest of the respect, for sustaining our lives. They have been the most independent people throughout the history. Rulers changed, power transferred and ideologies replaced but they were always the same unbothered. They fed every one, without discrimination. It is very ironical that, when there is shortage of food they are the first to die.
To justify the technology our growing need is often cited. We should also not forget that to feed out ever growing need we went for green revolution. To talk against it, may be termed blasphemous. But look what we have done to the once fertile land of Punjab. Soil has lost fertility. Water is undrinkable. Cancer cases are increasing. They will have to fend themselves. When this Punjab is found good for nothing we will create one more Punjab. Green revolution was heavenly dream for 20 years and now turning into scene of hell gradually. If we have to think of agricultural policies we have to think of our children and grandchildren and their grand children too.
Most of the technologies are defended by showing our need. I think there are other options too. Let us cut down our need. Let our agricultural out put stand still. Let all of us know that what ever we have we have to share it. Food is basic need it is not some luxury item. So if the agriculture fails let us cut down our food quantity. Food should not be a commodity. It should not be sold but given as per need. I am not clear how it can be implemented. State should be guiding protecting this policy rather than controlling it. lot can be told for that but then it will be going away from the topic.
So much of talk about growth rate. Our GRowing nEED (actually GREED) is dwarfing even high growth rates. Let us cut down our greed then even, presently, most unwanted Hindu rate of growth will look high and sustainable.
But what to do for The GM companies. They should be allowed to do experiments. But experiment should be contained in the laboratories and not brought in fields. Let them increase their knowledge pool with more GM variety.
I remember when people of Ayodhya came to persuade Rama to return. He made every one understand His stand. There was a Charvaka (a materialistic philosopher). He put forth his arguments which might have looked very appealing to any present day person. But Rama told in very simple words that no amount of argument can persuade him to give up Dharma. similarly in present case we should understand human being, nature and the relation between the two. And no amount of logic should be allowed to interfere with this to bring some irreversible change.
Any change should not be carried out at large scale without understanding the larger consequences. We the common people lack the integrated understanding, our acts are leading to disintegration. Our experiments should be carried out at smallest of the scale possible and we should await the change to grow at the natural pace. We have the habit of over dependence on every luxury and then make it a necessity. Similarly even GM crop research should be allowed to carried out but should not be made substitute to the traditional agriculture.