'Piyush Goyal Lied or Was Ignorant When He Said GM Items Won’t Enter India': Ashok Gulati and Avik Saha

In two separate interviews, packaged as one, with Ashok Gulati, distinguished professor at ICRIER, and Avik Saha, national president of the Jai Kisan Andolan, Karan Thapar for The Wire discusses the question if India has been successful in ensuring that genetically modified produce or its derivatives are not given access to the Indian market.

The government insists that is the case but could there be room for doubt? The interviews explore the extent to which there is credible room for doubt. Both guests believe that traces of genetically-modified (GM) material will enter India.

Gulati believes this will almost certainly be the case when we import dried distillers grains from the United States and could be the case (we are not sure) when soya oil is imported from the US. Saha, on the other hand, is fairly sure that it will be the case both when DDGs and soya oil are imported.

This means that when the Union commerce and industry minister, Piyush Goyal, told a press conference on February 7 that “no genetically modified items will enter India”, he was not correct. Saha inclines towards the belief that Goyal lied or was misled. Meanwhile, Gulati believes that Piyush Goyal probably didn’t know that DDGs contain traces of GM and was perhaps only talking about the direct import of American soya and corn rather than their derivatives.

Watch the full interview.

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