We will soon be eating genetically modified rice invented by seeds multinational corporations. Contamination of our rice a distinct possibility. --Arun Shrivastava

Someone said, “Monsanto invented the pig.’ Very soon we will learn, right here in India and Asia, that US and European seeds multinational corporations “invented” rice. And soon we shall be paying up front royalty to these companies for eating rice. Hold your breath; that situation is upon us.

I pose this question to you before you read further: What would you do to a company that claims it “invented rice” and wants its pound of flesh because you, Sirs and Madams, eat rice?

India is a rice country. Rice has been our staple for thousands of years. A French scientist had once said India has 200,000 varieties of rice. Other environmentalists say 100,000. Does it matter? In the traditional rice producing regions I found that the taste and shape of rice often differed from village to village. Not any more. Post green revolution, the varieties available in the market for commercial sowing has dropped to about fifty what must surely be called the greatest destruction of genetic diversity in any food crop anywhere in the world.

Forty years ago when my mother cooked basmati rice, a gentle aroma would pervade the entire home. Not any more. Under Green revolution rice slowly hybridized into a commodity and now produced in large mechanized farms with heavy doses of fertilizers and pesticides. Bayer CropScience, a German company, genetically modified rice seeds. This gene revolution genie is now out of the bottle and no one knows how many rice varieties are contaminated. No one really knows how much of this engineered poison has already entered our food chain. And that has happened without proper biosafety studies.