Green revolutions cancer train

Pesticides and cancer: a murderous concoction, a massive environmental and health disaster, while people are
dying in village after village of Punjab
By Sandeep Yadav Faridkot/Muktsar
Despite the relentless suffering, 41-year-old Karamjeet Kaur is not scared of death. Member of a proud, landed
family in Kotbhai village in district Muktsar, this mother of three has been diagnosed with uterus cancer. The
revelation has brought no change in her daily chores, except that she has to travel long distance for periodic
check-ups at the Acharya Tulsi Regional Cancer Treatment and Research Centre, at Bikaner, in Rajasthan. Her
hair has turned white due to illness and heavy medicines, and her face is weary in the fading daylight. Yet, she
tells her story with immense dignity, so distinctive among the strong, hardworking women of Punjab. And it
doesnt matter if it is her cancer she is talking about.
Karamjeet is one of the five battling cancer in her village. The Jhoke Sarkari village, in Faridkot district, has 10
cancer patients. There have been 15 cancer-related deaths in the last five years here. Even children, as young
as ten- year-old, are suffering from joint pains, arthritis and greying of hair. Their suffering is starkly visible.
Its the same story in several villages of PunjabJhariwala, Koharwala, Puckka, Bhimawali, Khara. Recently, a
12-year-old boy died of cancer in Khara village and a 25-year-old woman has been detected with breast cancer.
Similar cases of cancer deaths (apart from farmers suicides) have become the norm in the whole of Malwa
region of Punjab, comprising the districts of Muktsar, Faridkot, Moga, Sangroor and Bathinda. Although the
government has claimed 172 cancer deaths in Muktsar district in the last two years, Manpreet Badal, the
Shiromani Akali Dal MLA from Giddarbaha, contested the claim. He has a list of 300 cancer deaths from
Giddarbaha constituency alone. In the 50 villages falling in my constituency I have attended close to 300
funerals of people dying due to cancer in the last three months, says Manpreet.
Punjab is in the grip of a terrible environmental and health crisis emanating from the intensive farming practices
involving large doses of chemicals and pesticides in use for the past four decades, says Devinder Sharma,
agriculture policy analyst. The green revolution has not really been so green. The environment has been
intensely contaminated by the rampant use and abuse of chemicals and pesticides. The underground water is
clinically unfit for drinking or for irrigation.
A comprehensive study conducted in the area by the prestigious Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education
and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh, brings out unequivocal evidence that the use of indiscriminate, indiscreet,
excessive and unsafe pesticides is directly responsible for the rapid and significant rise in the number of
pesticide-related cases of cancers and cancer deaths. Studies by the Consultative Group on International
Agriculture Research (CGIAR) have established that Punjab is facing a serious second-generation environmental
crisis.
Malwa region, in the southwest of Punjab, is a cotton belt that is now growing the controversial, genetically
modified Bt cotton only. Gurmail Singh, a cotton farmer of Jaitu village, says that about 14 years ago the cotton in
the region was attacked by the American ball worm a deadly pest. I used about ten pesticide sprays over three
acres of land and still could not kill the pest, he recalls. There are many farmers who used more than 20 sprays
of pesticides to kill the pest, but were still unsuccessful.
Unaware of the harmful effects of the mindless use of pesticides pushed by the nexus of unscrupulous agencies
and private companies, the people of the region are paying a terrible price for their folly. Often wrongly advised
by influential agricultural lobbies and profit sharks, the greed of high yield overruled prevailing health concerns.
Indeed, Punjab has 2.5 per cent of the total agricultural land in the country, but is using the highest amount
more than 18 per cent of pesticides in the country. All this has contributed to widespread social devastation in
individual and community life.
Predictably, Dr Harinder Singh, Agriculture Development Officer, Muktsar, categorically blames the farmers for
not adhering to the precautions related to the use of pesticides. He says that a pesticide called Monocrotophose
is banned from being used on vegetables and fruits, but the farmers dont follow the warning. The precautions
are not binding as an official order since there are no such laws. Hence no legal action can be taken, says
Singh.
Umendra Dutt, executive director of Kheti Virasat Mission, an NGO in Faridkot, argues that the entire tragedy is a
result of a conspiracy hatched between the scientists of the influential Punjab Agriculture University (PAU) and
pesticide companies, which convinced the innocent farmers with a false promise: more pesticides, more yield.
The PAU continues to push pesticides, knowing too well that these were not required in the first place. In the
case of cotton, scientists have compounded the problem by turning the insect profile hostile, who, instead of
being eliminated are breeding heavily. There were six or seven kinds of pests that worried the farmers in the
1960s; today, the number of cotton pests has multiplied to over 60, says Dutt.
Almost 40 years after the green revolution, the International Rice Research Institute, at Manila, in the Philippines,
now publicly accepts its mistake in promoting pesticides. It is on record that pesticides were a waste of time and
efforts in Asia for the cultivation of rice. Farmers in Bangladesh, Vietnam and the Philippines have successfully
opted for pesticide-free cultivation. But the irony of Punjab is that the agriculture establishments are not open to
this bitter realism about pesticides. They are still gloating in the green-revolution mindset, insulated from
alternative paradigms for sustainable agriculture, environment and development.
After Sunita Narain, Director, Centre for Science and Environment, raised the issue of pesticide content in the
blood of the people of Punjab last year, the Punjab government constituted two committees one high-profile
committee, headed by Chief Minister Amrinder Singh, and another expert group headed by Dr K.K. Talwar,
Director, PGIMER, Chandigarh. The expert group met at least once but the high-powered committee failed to
meet even once in the last ten months. Meetings were fixed not less then five times but were postponed for one
reason or another.
While the Punjab government is busy clearing multi-crore SEZs, it has not been able to provide its people a
proper cancer treatment facility in the Bathinda region. Poor cancer patients are forced to go to distant Bikaner, in
Rajasthan, for their treatment. According to the National Cancer Registry Programme, out of 424 cancer patients
from Bathinda district, 328 were being treated at Bikaner. So much so, the train plying between Muktsar and
Bikaner has been rechristened as the cancer train by the locals.
While NGOs such as Kheti Virasat Mission, are doing their best to educate the farmers about health and
environment issues, even to the extent of asking them to pledge that they will do only organic farming, the state
governments role is starkly insensitive and lackadaisical. The Punjab government paid a meagre relief amount to
some cancer patients. But can half-hearted doles of monetary help stop the epidemic?
How will the government stop the ecological degeneration and health crisis, and save the people from cancer and
other
diseases directly related to top-heavy policies and the vested interests of pesticide lobbies?
The wake-up call has been buzzing non-stop and for a long time. But no ones listening, certainly not the powerful
green-revolution lobby. While the people die, or survive, waiting for death, in abject pain
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