Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
dinary people, and they prefer politically to be associated with the later
group. For example, for a televised debate about GMOs in the state, Sri-
dhar deliberately dressed in traditional formal atire
—a white
lunghi
(a
long garment wrapped around the waist in lieu of pants) with a buton-
down shirt—and refused to be addressed as “doctor.” He hoped to be
perceived publicly as sympathetic to farmers and agricultural concerns
in the state and less as a disengaged expert. Hence, in contrast to many
of the scientists at the Agriculture Department, staff at Thanal believe
that good agricultural policy and practice cannot just be based on the
scientific method alone, divorced from social and environmental realities,
but should include input from farmers and communities. Therefore, the
organization has prioritized its mission to mobilize farmers and commu-
nities throughout the state about environmental issues and to broadcast
their voices as often as possible to the government, the media, and now in
agricultural institutions.33
Overall, the Government of India has taken a different stance, and
has championed the use of a detached science in agricultural extension
and other government institutions. Scholars have posited that the gov-
ernment's preoccupation with science (for example, in nuclear research)
is the result of India's condition as a postcolonial nation with a strong
motive to assert its independence and its desire to claim its place in in-
ternational relations as a modern, developed nation. With science comes
legitimacy is the thought.34 Yet it has been well documented that particu-
lar forms and uses of science, especially in relation to agriculture and the
environment, lead to disastrous environmental and political outcomes for
communities, delegitimize farmers' agricultural knowledge, and overlook
the fact that knowledge about nature is socially constructed—that is, the
experts who get to generate a more authorized yet removed knowledge
also get to shape the content of that knowledge, as well as its use in sec-
tors such as policy, even though their analyses of the environment may
be incomplete.35
In the Indian context, activists such as Vandana Shiva claim that the
Indian government's apolitical use of science to dictate natural resource
management has undermined the livelihoods of groups like women, who
now have litle say in the use of common resources that they once relied
