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Whiff of fresh air
Caught in umbilical cord |
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Chinese stamp on Pak bomb
Ocean rivalry in top gear
Mind your language? Nay, your mindset!
Private academic institutions require a
regulator
China isn’t easily won over by Obama
‘GM crops have a role in preventing world hunger’
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Whiff of fresh air WITH pollution levels across cities in the country rising alarmingly, air quality is a matter of deep concern in India. While the new air quality standards announced by Union Environment Minster Jairam Ramesh which are on a par with European Union standards may have taken time in coming, they are welcome, being a reflection of the need felt to raise the bar. The high points of the revised norms like inclusion of new pollutants and removal of distinction between industrial and residential parameters are steps in the right direction. The revised and stringent norms may not bring about an overnight change but they can go some way in ensuring that India breathes better. India cannot afford to lose its battle against air pollution for the sake of its people and their health. Air pollution in India is reported to cause 5,27,700 deaths a year. While the ill-effects of air pollution on those suffering from respiratory problems are well known, studies have found that high levels of air pollution can damage heart and blood vessels too. In Delhi, while the change to compressed natural gas in public buses has led to a decrease in carbon monoxide levels, sulphur and nitrogen dioxide levels have gone up because of an increase in the number of private diesel vehicles. According to the Central Pollution Control Board’s ambient air quality report for 2008, in 88 per cent of the 110 Indian cities monitored, suspended particulate matter is in excess of permissible limits. Monitoring standards by themselves can achieve little and have to be enforced with rigour. Merely acknowledging that enforcement of new norms would be a challenge is not enough and the Environment Ministry must rise to the challenge. Early passage of the National Green Tribunal Bill, strict penalties on the “polluters pay” principle and fast development of an efficient public transport system are the need of the hour. It is heartening that under the new rules citizens can now demand better air quality. However, people should not only have the right to demand clean air, they must get it too. Trying to seek comfort in arguments that Delhi releases 12 times less carbon than Washington and that Indian cities produce lesser greenhouse gases than cities abroad can only prove to be self-defeating.
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Caught in umbilical cord
WHETHER BJP president Rajnath Singh resigns early as originally stipulated or decides to postpone the inevitable so as to “not jeopardise the party’s prospects” in the Jharkhand Assembly elections to be completed on December 18 is not crucial. What matters is that the party is still clueless which way it should go to put the recent election debacles behind it. For public consumption, it is the master of its own affairs. But the RSS hand in running the show is not quite as invisible as it wants everyone to believe. In fact, the RSS shadow has become even longer following the shrinking influence of the BJP. It is quite likely that the post of the party chief will go to saffron loyalist Nitin Gadkari whenever Rajnath Singh calls it a day. How that will impact the functioning of the party is not hidden from anybody. There is indeed an alarming vacuum in the upper echelons and the insiders do not really know how to fill it. The present chief’s tenure has been anything but inspiring. But none of its front-ranking leaders – M Venkaiah Naidu, Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj and Ananth Kumar – is strong enough to emerge a clear-cut winner on his or her own steam. They rather cancel each other out. That has given the RSS a pretext to take the reins in its own hands behind the curtain. Fiftytwo-year-old Gadkari, who has headed the BJP in Maharashtra for five years, has the support of the RSS, which may go out of its way to back its nominee, public statements to the contrary notwithstanding. But the four Delhi-based leaders may join hands against him in a bitter turf battle. Signs of things to come are visible in the statement of Sushma Swaraj some days ago that Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha L K Advani would continue in that post for the full term of five years, which is till the next Lok Sabha elections in 2014. That is diametrically opposite to the stand of two successive Sarsanghachalaks of the RSS, K S Sudarshan and Mohan Bhagwat, that the party is in need of a generational change. The BJP will have to tackle the infighting first before dreaming of becoming a fighting force itself.
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Chinese stamp on Pak bomb THOSE who doubted Chinese complicity in Pakistan’s nuclear weapon programme should revise their opinion, at least now. The Washington Post’s disclosure quoting Pakistan’s top nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan about Beijing supplying the necessary design and enriched uranium to Islamabad to make two nuclear bombs in 1982 provides fresh proof of China’s act of nuclear proliferation to help its “all-weather” friend. The proof is incontrovertible as it is contained in an 11-page note Khan prepared for Pakistan’s intelligence agencies after he was put under house arrest in 2004 during the Pervez Musharraf regime. The note found its way to an old acquaintance of Khan, a Western journalist, and then to the Washington Post scribe, who gave a detailed account of China’s dangerous role in Pakistan quickly realising its nuclear ambitions. It is surprising how the US thinks China can be allowed a monitoring role in South Asian affairs. Ever since the signing of the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal Pakistan has been trying for a similar agreement with China after the US said “no” to Islamabad in view of its well-known nuclear proliferation activities. Pakistan has not succeeded so far, but it is hopeful of clinching a “civilian” nuclear deal with China any time in the future. As Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi stated a few days back, nuclear cooperation between the two countries was an “ongoing process”. He indicated that if an accord on the lines of the Indo-US nuclear deal was not on the cards today, it might be there tomorrow. In the meantime, China has agreed to assist Pakistan to build two new nuclear reactors --- Chashma-I and Chashma-II. This is one of the achievements of Pakistan President Asif Zardari’s recent visit to Beijing. It is time China’s nuclear proliferation activities were exposed. China has been no less guilty of indulging in this dangerous game than Pakistan. If China had not provided 50 kg of weapon-grade enriched uranium to Pakistan in 1982, as part of a secret agreement reached in 1976 between the two countries, Islamabad could not be in a position to help North Korea, Iran and Libya to embark on a nuclear weapon programme. Libya has abandoned the race for the ultimate weapon, but the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran continue to pose a serious problem.
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Oh! God! that bred should be so dear,/And flesh and blood so cheap! — Thomas Hood
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Corrections and clarifications
Despite our earnest endeavour to keep The Tribune error-free, some errors do creep in at times. We are always eager to correct them. This column appears twice a week — every Tuesday and Friday. We request our readers to write or e-mail to us whenever they find
any error. Readers in such cases can write to Mr Kamlendra Kanwar, Senior Associate Editor, The Tribune, Chandigarh, with the word “Corrections”
on the envelope. His e-mail ID is kanwar@tribunemail.com. H.K. Dua
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Ocean rivalry in top gear IT is happy augury that in recent times India has shed its reticence on exercising greater influence in the Indian Ocean littoral states, commensurate with its size and stature. The Chinese have been working systematically for years in their quest for maritime supremacy but India traditionally fought shy of it fearing that China would take it amiss. It is a measure of the new self-confidence of this country that it is now factoring in the maritime angle in a major way in its foreign policy choices. With the Chinese already well-entrenched in strategic terms, India, as a late entrant, has now much work to do to stamp its authority and influence on the region. For decades the world relied on the powerful US Navy to protect this vital sea-lane. But now India and China, with their enhanced economic clout, are moving to expand their control of the waterway. China has given massive aid to Indian Ocean nations, signing friendship pacts, building ports in Pakistan and Bangladesh as well as Sri Lanka, and even setting up a listening post on one of Myanmar’s islands near the strategic Strait of Malacca. The Chinese involvement in Myanmar is particularly significant. Since the late-1980s, China has built naval facilities, radars and signal-intelligence posts all along the Myanmarese coast and in Coco Islands, which lie barely 18 km north of India’s Andaman Islands. There was a strong suspicion in India at one stage that Chinese military personnel were stationed in Myanmar and were using these facilities to collect sensitive information on India. Mercifully, India swung into action in the early 1990s by wooing the Myanmar Government for military cooperation. The Myanmar navy sent its warship to Port Blair on a goodwill trip. The Myanmarese also offered to show Indian naval officials the “suspicious” sites to try to convince them that they were not working with China against Indian interests. In April 2008, India and Myanmar signed the Kaladan river transportation agreement that involves India’s upgradation of Myanmar’s Sittwe port. It has also made a proposal to build a deep-water port in Dawei.3. Yet, there can be little doubt that Myanmar continues to be a strong base for the Chinese navy. Rivalry between China and India has also emerged over exploration rights and access to Myanmar’s energy resources. The increased naval cooperation between Pakistan and China in recent years and the development of the Gwadar naval base are of growing strategic concern for India. From Gwadar the Chinese can keep tabs on Indian activity in the Arabian Sea and monitor future US-India or US-Japan naval cooperation in the Indian Ocean. As for Sri Lanka, on its southern coast 10 miles from one of the world’s busiest shipping routes, China is building a $1 billion port that it plans to use as a refuelling and docking station for its navy, as it patrols the Indian Ocean and protects China’s supplies of Saudi oil. After Sri Lanka agreed to the plan, in March 2007, China showered aid, arms and diplomatic support on Sri Lanka in its war against the Tamil Tigers culminating in the virtual annihilation of that outfit. Bangladesh, with the help of China, test-launched its first C-802A anti-ship missile from a frigate in the Bay of Bengal in May last year. Commissioned in 1989, the 1,500-ton F-18 Osman is a Chinese-built Jianghu-class frigate. This is Dhaka's first C-802 missile test launch. China has an intimate relationship with Bangladesh's military. Much of its army, navy and air force consists of Chinese hardware. It is small wonder then that a 2004 Pentagon report had called Beijing’s effort to expand its presence in the region as China’s “string of pearls.” Expressing concern in a speech earlier this year that naval forces operating out of ports established by the Chinese could “take control over the world energy jugular,” India’s then naval chief, Admiral Sureesh Mehta, had warned that “each pearl in the string was a link in a chain of the Chinese maritime presence.” The fears are not misplaced considering that India imports 70 per cent of its oil needs through the sea route. Many Indian Ocean littorals like Mozambique, South Africa, Indonesia and Australia export coal to India. Others like Qatar, Malaysia, Indonesia and South Africa export natural gas to this country. Add to this our other maritime interests: almost 5 million Indians work in the Gulf and West Asia and the significance of the remittances they send home cannot be underestimated. The Indian Ocean is, therefore, vital to India’s interests and the country can ill afford to let China have its way. India has to cover its flanks so that it is able to defend itself from a potentially-devastating blockade of the sea route under Chinese auspices. Evidence of a more pro-active Indian policy in the Indian Ocean littoral states is the manifest quest for stronger ties with Myanmar, Iran, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Oman, among others. The recent visit of Defence Minister AK Antony to the Maldives was designed to enhance Indian influence vis-a-vis China. India agreed to set up a network of 26 radars across the Maldives’ 26 atolls, which will be linked to the Indian coastal command. In addition, India will also establish an air force station from where Dornier aircraft will carry out surveillance flights. The station will host Indian military helicopters too.
India has also furthered its interests in the Indian Ocean Rim, which includes the islands of Mauritius, Maldives, Seychelles and Madagascar and the rim states of South Africa, Tanzania and Mozambique through economic sops like tax exemption treaty with Mauritius, and military inroads. Another Indian response to China’s presence in the area has been the setting up of the integrated Andaman and Nicobar Command at Port Blair in 2001. That it caused anxieties in Beijing with regard to the security of its energy shipments is understandable. When in 2002 Indian Navy sea and air units under the command commenced coordinated patrols with the Indonesian Navy along the maritime boundary, it caused Chinese eyebrows to rise. In 2005, India began conducting similar patrols with Thailand in the Andaman Sea. All this has discouraged the tendency to take India for granted which was the case before this country began strengthening its defences and reaching out to Indian Ocean littoral states. India’s plans in the Andamans include building naval bases, aircraft facilities, networked radar stations and even fixed underwater sensors at various locations of the island-chain. That Chinese naval analyst Zhang Ming recently proclaimed that the Islands of Andaman and Nicobar Archipelago could be used as a “metal chain” to block Chinese access to the Straits of Malacca is indicative of Chinese fears that India will no longer take things lying down. The Indian Ocean’s strategic importance as the most important oil and trade shipping route of the world will increase still further in the coming decades when the galloping energy needs of India and China will account for more than half the growth of the world’s energy consumption. From the Indian stand-point, such augmentation of Indian naval capability is imperative to deter China and to ensure that its maritime interests are not
jeopardized.
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Mind your language? Nay, your mindset! HAVING an argumentative son on hands can be a challenging affair. Peeved with a situation in his college which had emerged from a divisive debate over the remarks a gentleman had made while twittering (alluding to a controversy over the words “Cattle Class” and “in solidarity with Holy Cows”), he confronted me. While in argument with me, he questioned as to why in English language, there is often an allegory to animals and their behaviour to describe a situation. He wanted me to deliver, what sagacious elements would term as “Pearls of Wisdom”. While I fumbled for an answer, he went on to say, “Everybody in the college is running around like “Headless Chickens”, and there are only a few options, either to “Bury one's head in the sand like an ostrich”, and “let sleeping dogs lie” or take “the bull by its horns”, and if on a latter course, then to attempt to educate them by gifting them with a book of phrases which idea no one would question, for no one “looks a gift horse in the mouth”, but still it may not serve the purpose as some one may not read it, for you can “take a horse to water, but you cannot force it to drink it”. As if in a monologue, he continued to say: “Everybody is `horsing around' and howling like a `pack of wolves' and that something had to be done to tackle the moderates who are `as mild as a lamb' and others whose `bark is more vicious than the bite'”. “Try making them aware”, I suggested helpfully. “Yes”, he said, “Awareness works for all and `what is good for the goose is good for the gander'”, and it will help both categories. “But if English is creating a problem, try conversing in Hindi”, I suggested. “You don't understand, there are a few, who, while always conversing in English, have lost their flair for Hindi”, he said. “You know `Kaua Chala Hans Ki Chaal' or you can say, `Dhobi Ka......... Na Ghar Ka Na Ghat Ka', and it may be akin to `Bhains Ke Aage Been Bajana', and trailed of by saying in Hindi too.........”, I told him: “Son, be it Hindi or English or any other language, they are all packed with beautiful phrases, and it is only the tongue which utters them at an inopportune moment, which converts them into loose cannons, and then these phrases become akin to `Bandar Ke Haath Mein Bandook', which can fire in any direction, including more often than not, one's own foot; and all that `wry humour is lost to a parochial mindset', leaving behind a taste of `rancid pickle', in one's
mouth. The writer is Judge, Punjab and Haryana High Court
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Private academic institutions require a
regulator EVEN as the drama on the deemed universities story is played out and the finger of suspicion points to the previous HRD ministry for overriding recommendations from a UGC committee, the need to have in place a suitable regulatory structure for private institutions of higher learning is once more highlighted. The casualness with which the UGC and HRD have handled this question so far underlines how cynical those institutions are towards higher education. An NBER working paper dated April 2009, titled “The Governance and Performance of Research Universities: Evidence from Europe and the US,” written by Philippe Aghion, M. Dewatripont, Caroline Hoxby, A. Mas-Colell and Andre Sapir, is setting the pace, given the stature of the authors. It takes off from Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s “Academic Ranking of the World Universities”. And that’s exactly where my problems begin. The Shanghai rankings use six variables to construct the index: number of Nobel Laureates amongst alumni (10% weight) and faculty (20% weight), annual number of articles published by the faculty in two journals, Nature and Science (20% weight), annual number of articles published by the faculty that figure in Science and Social Science Citation Indices (20% weight), the number of highly cited articles (20%) and finally, all the above indicators divided by the faculty size (10%). Aghion et.al. use the index on a large sample survey. Apart from the unavoidable arbitrariness of the weights, there are serious problems both in terms of the variables included and variables not included. First, Nobel Laureates. All Indian Nobel Laureates reside in the USA (must be many Chinese too) even although the work cited may have been done in India. It is not clear as to how the Shanghai index will deal with Andreu Mas-Colell should he get a Nobel prize: American or Spaniard? Secondly, there is something peculiar with the search amongst “Research Universities”, which would falsely suggest the existence of “Non-research universities”. The “output” of the former is defined to be research papers, patents etc. What would be the “output” of the latter? The item excluded is what the HRD Minister, Mr Sibal’s real worry will be: students in a “teaching university”. Students hardly figure in the NBER report. Also, what should be a primary concern for Mr Sibal, cost of higher education to students, does not feature at all in the NBER report. Written in 2008 and published in 2009, the report was most possibly drafted when the US economy was heading towards recession but the extent and severity were yet to be fully realised. It is evident today that unregulated banks, finance companies and manufacturers like GM have marched the US economy into a major crisis. Hence, the conclusions of the NBER paper supporting privatisation sound rather hollow, additionally because the resources available in the hands of the institutes in question too play no role in the paper. The Indian School of Business at Hyderabad (ISB) often mentioned as the epitome of greatness was set up with an endowment of Rs 400 crore. No wonder it figures high on the list of business schools in India. Here is a short table of endowments of nine major US universities; it should be kept in mind that this does not include the value of land, buildings and other assets. For MIT, for example, it does not include the Lincoln Lab. University
Endowment in
Brown
2.74 Columbia
7.14 Cornell
5.38 Harvard
36.55 M.I.T.
10.07 North Western 7.24 Princeton
16.35 Stanford
17.20 Chicago
6.63 Poor ISB! The correlation between these numbers and the Shanghai rankings will be near perfect. I did not bother to calculate. With the Shanghai rankings so strongly correlated with the wealth of the universities, it would appear that the only reason to pay homage to them is that they are made in China. The NBER report, thus, in its exclusion of variables of major concern to us, is irrelevant. So, let us turn to the real problem, here and now. Mr Sibal’s first task would be to get an accurate and reliable estimate of cost per student to the UGC at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels of the UGC-supported institutions. That must set the benchmark towards setting fees in privately run institutions rather than wild demands made by such institutions. There is an additional pitfall here. Many of us had campaigned for easier student loan from banks till we realised that tuition fees are raised unilaterally by the private institutions on the basis of the knowledge of availability of bank loans. The problem, thus, is quite complex but also quite important. The private institutions must be allowed to function but at the same time, they must be regulated very well. After the drama of Obama, practically nationalising Citibank and GM, a call to simply privatise education based on the NBER report is quite dangerous. A concluding note on the UGC. The magnitude of the UGC’s subsidy is enormous but at the same time without government-run schools and colleges and without the UGC’s help, lakhs of students will never reach higher education, nor would they ever have. To what extent if at all to reduce this subsidy and what to replace it with will be the first problem to solve for Mr Sibal. The inequity of a flat Rs. 20.00 per month fee paid in Delhi University by students driving Skodas is intolerable. If all hospitals can price discriminate between OPD, general ward and private ward, then why not colleges and universities? The tuition fee a student pays in colleges and universities has to be the last school tuition paid plus a heavy mark up to be decided department by department. Part of the price discrimination scheme would have to involve scholarships to needy and meritorious students. Apart from setting norms for tuition fees in private institutions, the main duty for the UGC is to prevent financial and academic abuses, to carefully guard the interest of the learner. Accepting money without corresponding facilities and running so-called “academic” institutions with under-qualified teachers are two most common and most serious offences. But a student without a degree in hand is in a most vulnerable position. She cannot fight a four-year-long court case, for example. That is where Mr Sibal’s expertise is most
required. The writer is a Professor of Economics at TERI University
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China isn’t easily won over by Obama WHEN it came to China, U.S. President Barack Obama's famous powers of persuasion failed to persuade. Although he came bearing a long shopping list that included Chinese support for tougher sanctions on Iran and more flexibility on currency exchange rates, Obama was met with polite, but stony, silences. Not only did the president come away without any definable concessions, but the Chinese appeared to be digging in their heels. Tuesday, just hours after Obama stood side by side with President Hu Jintao in the Great Hall of the People, praising China's commitments to "move toward a more market-oriented exchange rate over time," a senior Chinese official called a news conference across town to issue a rebuttal. "We maintained a stable yuan during the financial crisis, which not only helped the global economy but also the stability of the world's financial markets," said deputy foreign minister He Yafei, adding that it was too soon to talk about a change of strategy. The Chinese official also slapped down Obama's call for more Internet freedom, saying that "we need to ensure that online communications do not affect our national security." Perhaps most disappointing was China's failure to budge in its opposition to tougher sanctions on Iran. With China's extensive oil interests influencing its policies toward Tehran, the country increasingly is seen as an obstacle to reining in Iran's nuclear ambitions. Obama had hoped China would at least fall in step with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who publicly criticized Iran's intransigence during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit over the weekend in Singapore. "I would not say that we got an answer today from the Chinese, nor did we expect one," said Jeffrey Bader, director of East Asia Affairs on the National Security Council, briefing U.S. journalists after the meeting between the presidents Tuesday. He conceded that the Chinese were less worried about Iran's nuclear program than North Korea's. During the news conference at the Great Hall of the People, where the presidents each read statements outlining the highlights of the meetings as they perceived them, Hu conspicuously omitted mention of sanctions against Iran, acknowledging only that there were differences on some issues. After the ritual handshake and posing for photographs, the leaders left the podium – refusing to answer questions from the media. It was in keeping with the character of a presidential visit notable for its formality and lack of spontaneity. Every aspect of Obama's visit was carefully scripted, with the Chinese government taking pains to make sure nothing was left to chance. Obama did not meet with Chinese journalists, lawyers, human-rights advocates, environmentalists or any ordinary Chinese, and an expected meeting with Hu Shuli, who recently resigned as editor of China's leading business magazine, did not materialize. During Obama's "town hall" meeting in Shanghai on Monday, the 50 students selected to attend were mostly officers of the Communist Youth League. Wary that Obama might say something provocative, the Chinese government refused White House requests that the event be broadcast live on nationwide television. Instead, it was broadcast only on Shanghai television. Coverage of Obama's visit was also subdued, with noticeably fewer stories in the Chinese newspapers and shorter television reports than during other presidential visits. Obama's limited results in part reflect the profound shift in U.S.-Sino relations and global politics. "It used to be the U.S. could go around and say, `Do this and do that,' because they had so much leverage," said Dali Yang, director of the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Chicago. "Today, the U.S. can't do that." Ding Xinghao, president of the Shanghai Institute of American Studies, said Obama did not seem to connect with the Chinese as well as former President Bill Clinton had. He recalled a 1998 nationally televised question-and-answer session that Clinton held with students at Beijing University. "That was an amazing event. ... Clinton looked the students in the eye and answered very hard questions," Ding said. "Obama's performance in Shanghai was significant, but for me it couldn't compare." Then again, Ding noted, the novelty of a U.S. presidential visit has worn off. It was difficult to find anybody in Beijing who would express any real enthusiasm for Obama's visit. Even at a shop selling Obama souvenirs, the reaction was ho-hum. "Obama coming here doesn't have anything to do with us. He's the president of the United States. We're Chinese," said Yang Xiuying, a clerk at a Beijing crafts store selling dolls of Obama dressed as
Superman. — By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post
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‘GM crops have a role in preventing world hunger’ GM crops have a role to play in preventing mass starvation across the world caused by a combination of climate change and rapid population growth, a scientist has said. Professor Robert Watson, the chief scientific adviser at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), called for UK trials of GM foods, arguing that the government needs to be more open with the public about the risks and benefits of genetically modified foods. "Over the next 20 to 50 years, the population is going to increase from 6.5 to 9 billion. There will be more extreme weather, more demand for food, meat, and water, a changing climate: it is a very challenging situation, which, if we don't deal with it, could become a nightmare scenario," said Professor Watson. "We have to look at all the technologies, policies and practices, all forms of bio-tech, including GM." "We need to have trials in the UK, and to make them open and transparent," Professor Watson added. "We'd have to protect them, to stop them getting trashed. There are a whole range of situations in which science can play a very important role. We'll need seeds which are more temperature- and pest-tolerant." The suggestion that the government should resume trials of GM crops, which halted in 2008, has generated criticism from environmental campaigners who point out that the growth of herbicide-resistant GM crops in countries such as Argentina and the US has seen dramatic increases in pesticide use and created pesticide-resistant "super-weeds". "If the government does make the mistake of approving new field trials, then they should prepare themselves for the response of local communities, who will be worried about the risks that these crops pose," said Clare Oxborrow, senior food campaigner at Friends of the Earth. "The issues that applied a few years ago still apply. The risks of contamination have not been addressed; nor have any health and safety concerns." A 2008 trial by Leeds University, in which potatoes were genetically modified to resist a parasitic worm, provoked anger from local residents and was destroyed by environmentalists. In addition to environmental fears about loss of bio-diversity and harm to other crops, consumers are also concerned about the possible health risks posed by GM food. The chief scientist's comments add weight to the claims of the Royal Society which last month argued that GM crops will prove important in preventing future food shortages. The controversial report called for a 10-year research programme, in which £200m a year would be spent on science that improves crops and sustainable crop management – including research into GM crops. However, Professor Watson emphasised that GM foods could only play one part in solving a world food crisis, stressing that improving farming in developing countries is also vital. He recommends ending farming subsidies in developed countries, which would make the price of food produced in developing nations more
competitive.
— By arrangement with The Independent
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