Linked with mindfully.org, with Food policy and Globalization, and with Indian Food Policy IFP.
Devinder Sharma is an Indian journalist, writer, thinker. He is well-known and respected for his views on food and trade policy. Trained as an agricultural scientist, Sharma has been the Development Editor of the Indian Express, the largest selling English language daily in India at that time. He quit active journalism to research on policy issues concerning sustainable agriculture, biodiversity and intellectual property rights, environment and development, food security and poverty, biotechnology and hunger, and the implications of the free trade paradigm for developing countries. He has been a Visiting Fellow to the International Rice Research Institute, in the Philippines; Visiting Fellow at the School of Development Studies at the University of East Anglia, Norwich/UK; and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge/UK … (full text).
He says: … « Before 1995, it was not a dead world, we had seen trade for the last 10,000 years and trade is always between equal partners. Today’s model tells us whether you have surplus or no surplus, you must buy. But that was not the pattern earlier. All this is owing to misplaced priorities. There is no frontal attack on eradicating poverty. We are trying to remove poverty by trade. Somebody someday will stand up and say this is not what we want. People’s voice is the ultimate power to attaining equality and justice. Today it’s the dream of a few companies which is controlling the global agenda. I am sure people would understand and the process has already begun, and now we realize the strength in numbers. (full interview text, Jan. 07, 2004).
Displacing farmers: India Will Have 400 million Agricultural Refugees, Neoliberal Reforms Wreak Havoc.
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Devinder Sharma – India
… His recent works include, three books: GATT and India: The Politics of Agriculture; GATT to WTO: Seeds of Despair; and In the Famine Trap. Among the forthcoming titles is Keeping the Other Half Hungry, an incisive analysis of how the globalisation is accelerating the process of marginalisation of farmers in the Third World … (full text). See his Bio on Food-Security.
Famine as commerce, August 2002.
World Food Summit 2002 — The hungry will have to wait, July 06, 2002.
Bt cotton fiasco — Pushing farmers into a `booby’ trap, Nov 14, 2003.
GM Food and Hunger, a view from the South, Nov. 01, 2003.
Charity In The Name of Science, Nov. 25, 2003.
India’s New Farm Policy SERVING THE AMERICAN INTEREST, July 2000.
Dr Sharma criticised: Unless we bring out a price structure – a structure of our own, we cannot bail out Indian farmers from the prevailing crisis, said Dr Devinder Sharma of Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security, New Delhi … and:
In the name of ‘rising productivity,’ the total scenario is being mechanised. By 2050, there will be only robots in the world to perform the works which are presently handled by human beings. In the name of green revolution, the money power of rural areas have been taken to urban areas … (full text, December 20, 2007).
He says also: … « Thousands of patents are being drawn every week in America on plant-based remedies and plant-based products. What happens is that, when the company draws a patent, you know, and somebody challenges it, then you have to go on building up a huge battery of, you know, not only lawyers with them, but also a whole lot of research to challenge those cases in America » … (full interview text, August 13, 2007).
… He chairs an independent collective in New Delhi, called the Forum for Biotechnology & Food Security. The Forum is a collective of some of the well-known policy makers, agriculture scientists, economists, biotechnologists, farmers and environmentalists to examine and analyse the implications and fall-out of various policy decisions, both national and international. The Forum was successful in stalling the import of cow dung and piggery droppings from Holland, stopping the import of recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) into the country, banning terminator’s entry into India and delaying the introduction of genetically modified Bt cotton in India … (full text).
Find him and his publications on linkedIn; on mindfully.org; on outlook India.com; on the free dictionary; on bookfinder.com; on journals and periodicals; on Google Book-search; on Google Scholar-search; on Google Group-search; on Google Blog-search.
link: É cedo para dizer se negociações serão retomadas Estadão, Brazil, 31 July 2008.