Engineering (MADGE) points out
that, at this rate of degradation, “75
days after harvest a person would
need to eat 31 kg to get the same
amount as in a handful of fresh
parsley, as Vitamin A degrades in
storage.” They further state that
“one carrot has the same amount
of vitamin A found in nearly 4kg of
cooked GM golden rice.” Perhaps
this is the reason why, from being
the solution to VAD that saves
millions of lives in the 2000s, the
proponents are now stating that
Golden Rice is “just one among
many solutions” to VAD. And it
brought back the key question - do
we really need Golden Rice to fight
Vitamin A Deficiency? A clear no.
Golden Rice, a false saviour
The delay of the commercia-
lization of Golden Rice, and the
‘lacklustre acceptance’ of the public
is due to the inherent flaws and
failures of both the technology and
the product itself. Golden Rice is
going to be useless and unlikely to
achieve its objective of helping to
solve VAD if its beta-carotene is
consistently low, and even prone to
degradation. Yields have been
consistently low, indicating that
farmers might suffer economically
if they choose to plant Golden Rice.
Meanwhile, Golden Rice will
allow corporations to set their foot
at the door of our agriculture and
introduce more genetically modified
food crops. Pro-Golden Rice groups
have always been accusing Golden
Rice detractors, blaming them as
responsible for the death of millions
of children suffering from VAD. But,
who is really committing the crime?
While these pro-GR groups
keep tagging the Golden Rice
detractors as ‘vandals’, they also
continue to take for granted the
realities of hunger that these
farmers and the Asian peoples are
experiencing on a daily basis. Our
countries are blessed with bountiful
resources to feed our population,
but poverty and social inequalities
January - 2019
stop people from procuring safe
and nutritious food. Golden Rice
will never solve VAD and will only
strengthen the status quo, benefiting
only those interested in controlling
our nations’ agricultural sector, the
finance capital of imperialist
countries. In fact, this can turn into
a situation where the ‘medicine’ is
worse than the illness it intends to
cure.
Courtesy : The Grain
THE FARCE OF CSR!
According to the Companies
Act 2013, certain class of companies
need to spend at least 2% of the
average net profit towards corporate
social responsibility (CSR) activities
and make mandatory disclosures
about their spending. This is
supposed to be the object of building
an enduring organisation of
corporates as the trustees of
society’s wealth”.
With such high-sounding lofty
slogans the corporate world as well
as the rulers who have been sub-
servient to the big-capital have been
hood-winking the people, covering
up the colossal loot of the wealth
from India of the imperialist
transnational corporations and
making the people to believe that
the corporates and big-business
organisations take up the social
responsibility of the well-being of
people.
However a recent study for the
year 2015-2017 about the CSR
practice in India had shattered the
myth propagated by the vested
interests and the powers that be
about the virtues of CSR and
corporate governance. The business
school of Thomas Schmidheiny
centre conducted the study about
CSR spending in India and revealed
that the CSR activities of business
firms are nominal and ineffectual.
According to its study report
only 50% of the family firms have
met their CSR obligations to the
prescribed amount only 45.1% of
non family firms have contributed
to CSR where as mere 31.7% is
contributed by the state enterprises.
Even these CSR spendings lack
transparency and strong governance
mechanisms.
Another study revealed even
in this meagre-spending on CSR
activities by the business firms,
most of the amounts spent in the
name of CSR were in the form of
donations to the ruling-class political
parties. In other words the ‘CSR
activities’ conducted by the business
firms has nothing to do with the
society or its real requirements.
In effect the CSR is proved to
be a farce that has nothing to do
about bringing about well-being in
the society and that trusty-ship of
society’s wealth is a myth created
by the neo-liberal capitalist economy,
which is purposefully intended to
hood-wink people of the world to
create a good-will to the corporations
of big-capital that loot the entire-
world and the capitalist system that
approves, justifies and protects the
exploitation and loot of the capital
and its rule over the globe.
This shall open the eyes of
those who have illusions about the
virtues of capitalist system!
C.P.I(ML) Publication
Centenary of Great October Socialist
Revolution Seminar Papers
For Details:
P.Jaswantha Rao, Secretary,
T.N.Memorial Trust, 32-13-26/1, M.R.Puram, Vijayawada, pin-520 010.
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