Indian community groups form alliances with UK research institutes to create an accountability forum for Indian scientists and policymakers on future agricultural technologies

Initiatives aimed at bringing new developments in biotechnology under a greater degree of control by non-elites have demonstrated that there are widespread and well-founded misgivings about genetically modified crops among the very people the technology is supposed to lift out of hunger. Between 2000 and 2003 five separate citizens' juries were organised by broad-based coalitions, in Karnatakaand Andhra Pradesh, two of India 's largest states, in Zimbabwe, and in the states of Ceará and Maranhão , Brazil.

Anjamma, one of the jurors in Andhra Pradesh, is the female head of an extended family of 17 people who survive on just four acres of land, only two of which can be irrigated. She joined 18 other farmers of small and marginal holdings in perhaps the largest-ever event to allow the poor to assess the potential advantages and risks of GM crops. She had not known about such technologies before joining the citizens' jury.

Called Prajateerpu, meaning "people's verdict" in Telegu, Anjamma's jury sat over five days and heard from thirteen witnesses on a huge range of topics. The witnesses included representatives of the authors of "Vision 2020", a plan to transform the state's agriculture to one based on GM crops and mechanised farming methods, which was devised by the US management consultants, McKinsey and Co, in collaboration with the state government and funders at the World Bank and the UK 's Department for International Development. As in other areas, the proposed introduction of GM in Andhra Pradesh would come within an industrialised system of agribusiness, grouping small farms into larger units, and the introduction of contract farming whereby a large proportion of the state's land would be run by large corporations rather than by small-scale farmers. It would see the number of people working on the land being reduced from 70 to 40 per cent, equal to a loss of livelihood for around 20 million people with no plans for alternative livelihoods for these people. Having listened to the witnesses and discussed the issue among themselves, the Prajateerpu jury found that the policy and technical package of Vision 2020 was unacceptable to them. But neither their verdict nor those of the other jury processes that took place between 2001 and 2003 - one in Zimbabwe and two in Brazil - was a simple "no". In most cases jurors were provided with the opportunity to put forward their own carefully considered vision of the future of food and farming, with a wide-ranging list of demands detailing action to be taken by the government, civil society organisations and foreign aid agencies to implement their recommendations.

As for Vision 2020, Anjamma could not understand how any responsible government could knowingly take part in a scheme that would drive her, and millions of smallholder farmers like her, from their land:

You are talking about the removal of a third of the population. Where will the farmers go? If you throw them away, what will they do with their lives? You have introduced hybrid varieties and also chemical agriculture, and we are now in debt. Now we are talking about GM crops. Again the small and marginal farmers will be losers. The big farmers will walk away with all the returns.

The citizens' juries conducted on GM in Zimbabwe, Brazil and India differed from many previous attempts at allowing farmers to assess new technologies because the process allowed jurors to analyse the proposed introduction of new agricultural technologies in the context of broader social, economic and political questions. Rather than concentrating merely on specific issues such as land consolidation, GM crops and forest produce, the witnesses' evidence and the resulting discussions ranged across aspects of rural livelihoods that jurors, rather than the organisers or witnesses, thought were important.

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