CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF LAW AND GOVERNANCE
Jawaharlal Nehru University
SEMINAR SERIES
ANIKET AGA
Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies
Ashoka University, Sonepat
On
Bureaucratic epistemes and regulatory disputes: Genetically Modified (GM) crops between science and legal-administration
Abstract
A fierce controversy surrounding the question of allowing commercial release of GM food crops, has been raging in India for nearly a decade. While the controversy concerns far-reaching issues of food security, food sovereignty, consumers' choice, farmers' livelihoods and ecological impacts, these are articulated in government policymaking via bureaucratic routines and documents. In this talk, I examine the regulatory regime overseeing GM crops in India, instituted in the late 1980s, to argue that two epistemes—scientific and legal-administrative—are fused in its design. By unraveling the course of two regulatory disputes, I suggest that an inherent ambiguity is lodged between scientific and legal-administrative modes of documentation, as facts generated in one register can be challenged by those registered in the other. I demonstrate that this ambiguity both fosters and constrains democratic participation and scrutiny over government policymaking, with deeply ambivalent implications.
3.00 PM, Thursday, 28 February 2019
Conference Room, CSLG, JNU
About the Speaker: Aniket Aga is Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Ashoka University, Sonepat. He is interested in science and technology studies, democratic politics, and agrarian studies. His research examines the ongoing controversy over genetically modified (GM) food crops in India. More broadly, he works on questions of environmental justice, food democracy, and sustainable agriculture, with a focus on Maharashtra. He holds a PhD in Anthropology from Yale University, and has published in the Journal of Peasant Studies, Journal of Agrarian Change, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and Economic & Political Weekly, among others.
PLEASE JOIN US FOR TEA AFTER THE SEMINAR
ALL ARE WELCOME
DIRECTIONS: From the JNU main gate (North Gate), proceed straight until you get to a T-junction. Turn left. Continue until you reach a second T-junction. Turn right. Follow the road for just 0.7 km until you see a bus stop labelled ‘Paschimabad’. About 50 m past the bus stop take the first right turn. The CSLG building is on the right at the blind end of the lane. The conference room is on the first floor. A lift is being installed at CSLG and we hope the conference room will be more accessible in some time.
Ghazala Jamil,
Coordinator, CSLG Seminar Series
