Endosulfan - economics versus biodiversity

The Kasaragod district is the northernmost district in the state of Kerala, adjacent to the more famous district of Kannur. The administrative center of the district is the Kasaragod town. Just like most of Kerala, the district has the beautiful Western Ghats on the east, and the mighty Arabian Sea touches its western shores. It is actually the second smallest of the 14 districts of Kerala, but that doesn't amount to much in a relatively small state.

According to the provisional population totals done in the 2011 Census of India, the district has a total population of 1,302,600, with a favorable Male-Female ratio at 626,617 males to 675,983 females. The literacy rate is also very high, at 89.95% for the entire district population. Keeping everything else aside, the district like most of Kerala is beautiful, green and steeped in history and culture.

So why should I talk of this tiny, relatively calm and happy district among the more than 650 districts in the country? Because the people of this district have been paying the massive human cost of using the insecticide, Endosulfan, now banned in most most countries as others are in the process of banning it. First, using my readily available friend Wikipedia, let me try to learn, for my own sake too, what Endosulfan really is.

Endosulfan is a highly toxic insecticide and acaricide (something which kills ticks and mites), which has the potential to accumulate in the human body, thus making it a dangerous substance and in addition, it is an endocrine disruptor, meaning it affects the normal functioning of the human hormonal glands. If such is the case, the first question one would ask is that why is this insecticide still out there? I think that answer lies not just in the history of Endosulfan but also a lot of organo-chemical drugs that have been developed by the scientific community over the past decades. Many of them at first seem like a great innovation but its only their sustained use and their long term reactions on human beings and other flora/fauna that bring out their real affects.

Two famous chemicals that follow this story and most of us are aware of are DDT and MSG. Both these drugs are now banned in most countries after it has been shown by various scientific studies and experiments that the long term repercussions from these drugs are far worse than the apparent short term gains. MSG in fact, was for many years a favorite flavour used in food items around the world, especially fast food noodles from Japan, considering that the Japanese company, Ajinomoto, actually created this substance and Ajinomoto became a common name for it. Apparently MSG is still commercially produced because most of its opposition is based on anecdotal evidence, but its use has been severely limited in food items, especially in the developed nations. Though time and again, there have been questions raised about the authenticity of the claims that it is bad. This article by Alex Renton in The British newspaper, The Guardian is actually very insightful and a very good read, and he's actually done some good research into the background of MSG, and the issues surrounding it.

Coming back to Endosulfan, it is my strong belief that due to the third world's inherent poverty and the inability of most of their populations to pay the extra cost of shifting to a new mode of production or consumption, allows many of the bad substances to extend their shelf life a little longer. Similarly, on a more sinister scale, their continued demand in such countries allows the makers of those substances to make in some extra money as their developed markets dry up. If this situation occurs when it comes to food items, it becomes especially dangerous, and more often than not, the society and/or the government of that third world nation itself is too unaware, or simply helpless, to do anything about.  

Just to quote an example from The Guardian article linked above, the writer writes - 

Thus since 1968 the processed food industry has had its own nasty headache as a result of MSG. Hundreds of processed products would have to be withdrawn if amino-acid based flavour-enhancers could not be used. They would become, simply, tasteless.

So the food industry employed its usual tactic in the face of consumer criticism: MSG was buried by giving it new names. The industry came up with a fabulous range of euphemisms for monosodium glutamate - the most cheeky of all is 'natural flavourings' (however, the industry did remove MSG from high-end baby foods).

Nowadays the industry's PR beats a big drum. 'Natural, Tasty, Safe' is the slogan. 'Many people believe that monosodium glutamate is made from chemicals. Monosodium glutamate is a chemical in the same way that the water we drink and the oxygen we breathe are chemicals,' explains an MSG website.

When I think of it, this same logic is used by big corporates everywhere and I see it most prominently in the Genetically modified foods issue. Some call them the stuff that will bring food to the tables of the poorest third world citizens, some call it something more sinister. My personal stance on them, with whatever little knowledge I have, is that I am firmly against them.

Endosulfan, now banned in over 80 countries, is one of the substances that has been banned under the Stockholm Convention that took place in 2011. It will be completely banned in 2012 with exceptions to certain use. So a substance that has been banned in over 80 countries is still produced by the government of India through the Hindustan Insecticides Limited. On a side note, one of its "premier" products is still DDT. Thus, with so much information supporting both sides, and such a blank void in between, naturally one wouldn't know what to think. For the farmer, getting cheap insecticides from the government, and which seem to be working efficiently, is probably more important than the many studies done by men in lab coats telling him that it can cause cancer and other potentially fatal harm.

The official stance of the Government of India is that it will take a decision only upon proof of the adverse affects of the insecticide. The report from Indian Council of Medical Research is what the government is waiting for. According to Mr. Jairam Ramesh,

“If there is evidence to show that it has all-India health effects, we will ban it at the national level.” However Mr. Ramesh claimed that Endosulfan was a broad spectrum pesticide and there were no other cost-effective alternatives to it as yet. He knew about the disaster in Kasaragod and had asked for more evidence. “Some people say there are other districts in Karnataka, which have also been affected. I am very sensitive to this issue,” he said.There are two points I want to raise in this - one, while Kerala Government has banned the drug since 2005, it has only been now that the national government is actually looking to find out the details of this insecticide and form an opinion. The second point is that as Mr. Ramesh points out, there are no cost-effective alternatives to it as yet. This second point fits perfectly with the point I had raised earlier that for the third world nations, the economic cost of replacing a substance with such a widespread and critical use is just too high to cast aside.

It is not just the Government of India which was napping, but perhaps the entire country, because the effects of Endosulfan till now has been widespread in a very small region. In fact, when the ban on Endosulfan was discussed in the Stockholm Convention, India raised a strong protest against banning the substance, which I am sure was done purely from an economic point of view. Keep in mind that India is the world's largest exporter of the product, and already there is a strong lobby of Endosulfan manufacturers who say that there is nothing wrong with the substance. I hear news now that India has said it will support the ban, with exceptions.

The matter is now with the Honourable Supreme Court, and one can hope that at least this institution, can give its opinion without any political or economic considerations, and purely from the point of view of what the law seems right or wrong, devoid of emotions. The children, aged, the flora and fauna of the region in and around the northern Kerala district have suffered a great loss which is linked directly to the use of endosulfan, and it is high time the government, and other stakeholders got together to work towards a better alternative. Whatever the official stance of the Government of India, for 80 countries to ban it worldwide, I am sure there is strong reason to believe of its harmful effect on biodiversity. In fact, I believe that the broader issue of a second green revolution needs to be looked at in our country in earnest because if its endosulfan today, it will be something else tomorrow. For too long has our agriculture, which includes the issues of fertilizers, seeds, pesticides, etc, has been looked at and handled in a piecemeal manner. It is way more important than that for us and for our future.