Several key issues that concern public health and environment may not be a subject of prime-time television discourse on election campaign, but they are certainly on the boil inside and outside the government.
In certain cases the government is taking decisions while on others interested parties are trying to make full use of the policy interregnum. These critical issues range from junk food to nuclear energy. Hectic lobbying is going on so that a desired scenario can be projected to the next government.
Siddhartha Mukherjee's study has been used by mobile companies to defy health concerns raised by the WHO.
The position taken by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) on defining junk food and ways to restrict them in schools, in an ongoing litigation in the Delhi High Court, is a case in point. The guidelines proposed by the food regulator are so absurd that they can only gladden the hearts of food companies, which have been deeply perturbed by the litigation and want to avoid imminent ban on their products in schools at any cost.
In this endeavour, the food regulator has become a ready partner and is seen to be acting as an extension of the Ministry of Food Processing Industries. Another most blatant case of lobbying comes from the mobile phone industry which has been hiring paid speakers from across the globe to deny any links between radiation and human health. It got award-winning oncologist-turned-writer Siddhartha Mukherjee to endorse its stand that cancer research agency of the World Health Organisation (WHO) has faulted in classifying electromagnetic radiation from mobile phones as "possibly carcinogenic to humans". One can understand the mobile industry's problem as it faces possibility of stronger regulation on health grounds.
In the same vein, head of a pesticide manufacturers association argued in an edit page article in a business daily that "pesticides are good for health" and that chemical-free organic foods can actually make you sick. Needless to say, the article was designed to influence outcome of the ongoing litigation about harmful levels of pesticide residues in vegetables and fruits.
Giants in the junk food industry have so far warded off legislation on junk food.
The strategy adopted of all such lobbies is similar to that used by the tobacco industry in the 1970s and 1980s - first deny any link with cancer or ill-health and then question science itself thereby creating confusion in the minds of people.
Climate change deniers too deploy a similar strategy. Meanwhile, anti-nuke and anti-GM groups have unearthed more damaging material through RTI. After the cabinet gave financial approval for two more Russian reactors at Kudankulam, atomic energy officials publicly stated that an insurance package was being worked out with the General Insurance Corporation (GIC) for reactor 3 and 4. But GIC, in an RTI reply, has denied any official communication from the Nuclear Power Corporation about insurance cover for the two units.
In such a case, what happens to nuclear liability because the Russian suppliers don't want to take any? Notes relating to preparation of government's affidavit on field trials of GM foods to be filed in the Supreme Court have indicated that Jayanthi Natarajan as environment minister wanted to take a principled stand on the issue, but eventually lost her job because of that.
No comments:
Post a Comment