Supreme Court issues notice to Centre over open use of pesticides
New Delhi, November 14: The Supreme Court issued notice to the Central government in connection with overt use of pesticides in India and sought a reply regarding the same in 6 weeks. The Apex Court issued the notice after it took cognizance of a petition filed by Prashant Bhushan, an advocate who demands regulation of chemical pesticides in farming.
The petition has been filed by Kavita Kuruganti from Bangalore, who is the National Convener of Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture (ASHA) working in agrarian crisis in India, along with Amar Singh Azad, who retired as Chief Medical Officer in Punjab, and VR Ananthasayanan from Chennai. Ananthasayanan is the convener of Safe Food Alliance, a consumer movement on food safety and sustainable farm livelihoods in Tamil Nadu.
It added almost no part of the farming belts of India have been left unscathed by the disastrous effects of pesticides on human health, but certain regions have been hit harder than others.
It cited the case of Punjab, which took the lead in adopting ‘Green Revolution’ techniques that combined the use of chemical fertilizers, chemical pesticides, irrigation and hybrid seeds, and became one of the largest producers of wheat and rice in the country.
Relying in scientific reports, the petition said, “The last four decades of high agricultural productivity have left the farmers, farm workers, and residents of the farming areas in a state of great distress, with their environment getting poisoned, their water getting contaminated and their health failing.”
Pesticides and herbicides deplete crop production, thereby causing farmers to commit suicide. The main use of pesticides in India is for cotton crops (45%), followed by paddy and wheat.
There are 234 pesticides registered in India. Out of these, 4 are WHO Class Ia pesticides, 15 are WHO Class Ib pesticides and 76 are WHO Class II pesticides, together constituting 40% of the registered pesticides in India. In terms of consumption too, the greatest volumes consumed are of these poisons.
The following is a broad picture of the top pesticide-consuming states in India (total pesticides consumed, in metric tonnes of technical grade material, during 2005-06 to 2009-10, as per official data of the Directorate of Plant Protection, Quarantine and Storage, Govt of India).
