Rajya Sabha Report on GM Crop

Rajya Sabha Report on GM Crop for GS Mains

India, the second most populous country in the world, is soon likely to be the world’s most populous country, considering our rate of increase in the population. The requirement of foodgrains has also been keeping pace with the increasing population. In order to meet our ever increasing demand for foodgrains and keeping in mind the limited land and water resources, high input cost, worsening soil health, dependence on rain, increasing indebtedness, stagnated productivity, and climatic changes, innovative scientific and technological efforts are the need of the hour to give fillip to our agricultural production so as to ensure food security of the country on a sustainable basis. On the one hand we have the ever increasing demand for food and on the other hand, we have to be equally cautious to strike a fine balance between technological and scientific interventions and their impact on our environment, bio-diversity, bio-safety, human health and health of livestock and animals. To address these issues, it is claimed that the genetically modified crops have been developed worldwide for a variety of purposes and reasons such as enhancing agricultural productivity, reducing dependence on the use of pesticides, improving the agronomic performance of crop plants; enhancing the nutritional value of foods and feeds; increasing tolerance to biotic (insect pests, fungal, bacterial and viral diseases) and abiotic stresses (drought, high and low temperature), elevated levels of carbon dioxide (major global warming gas); providing cost effectiveness and sustainable industrial products, cleaning of soils contaminated with heavy metal pollutants including bio-energy (biofuels) crops to produce clean energy. There have been major controversial debates in the country since the introduction of genetically modified crops in India. On the one hand, it has been argued that genetically modified crops can provide a potential solution to many of our malnutrition problems and food security and also help in preserving and protecting the environment by way of minimizing dependence on chemical herbicides and pesticides, and increasing crop yield whereas and on the other hand, there have been widespread apprehensions from various sections of the society on the safety of genetically modified crops especially in the area of human and animal health and environmental degradation. Hereby providing the gist of report. Index 1.  INTRODUCTION 2.  STATUS OF GM CROPS 3.  PROCESS FOR THE GM CROP DEVELOPMENT IN INDIA 4.  REGULATORY FRAMEWORK IN INDIA 5.  Risk assessments method used for the environmental release of a GM plant 6.  GM CROPS - IMPACT ON HUMANS AND ANIMALS 7.  Conclusion