1. Stop maize, rice field trials: GM free Karnataka
2. Pro-GM crops group mobilising opinion in states
3. Sharad Joshi - GMWatch Profile

NOTE: For more on the "farm Leader" Sharad Joshi who's calling for GM crops in India, see item 3, or for a version with links, see http://bit.ly/hurbJX
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1. Stop maize, rice field trials: GM free Karnataka
The Times of India
Jan 26, 2011
http://bit.ly/hgYAoz

BANGALORE: Despite Doddballapur farmers destroying genetically modified (GM) rice field trials last year, Karnataka continues to be a hotspot for GM field trials.

GM free Karnataka, a coalition of NGOs, on Tuesday urged the government to immediately stop three transgenic maize trials being carried out in Dharwad, Tumkur and Davangere and one GM rice field trial in Davangere.

This comes in the wake of a latest report on the toxicity of Bt Brinjals by Dr Lou Gallagher, a toxicology and epidemiology expert from New Zealand. The report was compiled at the behest of Aruna Rodrigues, the main petitioner of the Supreme Court PIL on GMOs.

The main findings of Dr Gallagher's report is that food safety studies for Bt Brinjals weren't conducted in accordance with published standards and didn't accurately summarize results.
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2. Pro-GM crops group mobilising opinion in states
Zeenews.com
Sunday, January 23, 2011
http://bit.ly/eWDC1E

New Delhi: With a moratorium on cultivation of GM crops, pro-biotech crops group are now mobilising opinion in states for allowing farmers to cultivate genetically modified produce.

The pro-GM crops group include prominent farm leader Sharad Joshi.

"We have met Agriculture minister and senior officials of Agriculture/Horticulture departments of Karnataka, West Bengal, Bihar, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat to convince them about merits of cultivating biotech crops," executive director, ABLE (Association of Biotech Led Enterprise) Sivramiah Shantharam told a news agency.

The government had in February last year put a ban on farmers growing the genetically modified aubergine (Bt Brinjal) after a large section of the society, including environmentalists, expressed health safety fears on allowing such produce in the human food chain.

"We have not received hostile response from any states so far," said Shantharam, who claims to have served in the US department of Agriculture for around 15 years.

Sharad Joshi who spoke to a news agency on phone from Maharashtra said they were demonstrating merits of GM technology to farmers in different states to generate a positive response.

The ABLE official said "Over 25 countries including the USA, Canada, Argentina, Brazil and many European nations are successfully cultivating biotech crops."

He called upon scientists to "honestly" voice their opinion on the subject.

Recently, Joshi, director National Research Centre on Plant Biotechnology (NRCPB) P Anand Kumar, Plant Molecular physiologist IS Dua and director National Seeds Association of India (NSAI) NK Dadlani held a press meet in the national capital to counter "falsehood" spread by anti-GM crops group.

They cited demonstrable benefits of Bt cotton in support of their argument.

Joshi, who is founder of Shetkari Sanghatana, had attributed the government moratorium on the GM crops to Union Environment minister Jairam Ramesh's "predisposition guided by politics".

The Indian government had in mid-February last year issued a moratorium on the development of GM aubergine (Bt Brinjal, as it is known locally).
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3. Sharad Joshi - GMWatch Profile
http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Sharad_Joshi

Sharad Joshi is the founder of the 'farmer unions' Shetkari Sanghatana and Kisan Coordination Committee, both of which have been used to promote GM crops not just in India but in Europe and at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. Sharad Joshi is also the leader of a grouping called Farmers for Freedom and of a political party, the Swatantra Bharat Party, of which he was also National President.

Both Shetkari Sanghatana and Kisan Coordination Committee are described as 'peasant' organisations. Joshi is the author of a book, 'Organisation of Peasants - Thought and Practice' and he describes himself as a 'Peasant Leader'. However, his background does not suggest peasant roots.

He was a lecturer in Economics and Statistics at the University of Poona (1957-58) before joining the Indian Postal Service (1958-68) from where he moved to the International Bureau of the UPU - the intergovernmental organisation for postal services. During this period (1968-77), Joshi was resident in Bern, Switzerland, where the UPU is based.

All the groups with which Joshi is connected claim to be 'non-political' but have an ultra-libertarian stance. They emphasise not just freedom of access to markets, but freedom from state regulation and from any state economic intervention. In recent years, the freedom to use GM crops without any restriction has been added to the list.

Joshi has pursued his goals via 'a number of agitations', even being arrested on one occasion. IN 2002 he threatened to lead a campaign of civil disobedience if Monsanto's GM cotton was not approved by India's regulatory body. However, the level of popular support for Joshi and his views is open to question.

According to Corporate Observatory Europe, the 'marginal position' of Joshi's groups and their ideology was revealed 'when Joshi ran for the Indian parliament in the mid-90s and received only a few hundred votes.'

Similarly, although Shetkari Sanghatna and KCC are presented as 'mainstream' farmers' movements, in reality Joshi and his organisations have had an increasingly small constituency and typically represent only large local landowners growing cash crops, rather than India's numerous subsistence farmers.

Despite this tiny following, Joshi is a Member of the Advisory Board of the Monsanto-backed World Agricultural Forum (WAF), in St. Louis, USA, and Chairman of the WAF India Chapter and South Asia Chapter. He is also Chairman of Shivar Agroproducts Ltd., an agroproducts processing and marketing company, and of Bhama Constructions Ltd.