Prime Minister I. K. Gujral wants to send the right signal across to foreign exporters. By allowing the import of a million tonnes of contaminated wheat from Australia, he has made it abundantly clear that India's foodgrain requirements can even be met by imported cattle feed.

Following the legacy left behind by the Narasimha Rao Government, which refused to prosecute foreign banks for their alleged role in the security scam lest it send the wrong signal to foreign investors, Gujral too has laid new foundations for building an unhealthy and substandard nation. After all, importing contaminated and diseased grain threatens not only the sustainability of the country's food production but also undermines the nutritional security of an otherwise acutely malnourished nation.

First came the diseased wheat from the US, followed by adulterated grain from Argentina. With India's refusal to terminate the contract with the grain exporters for failing to meet norms, receiving contaminated wheat shipments from Australia was surely unavoidable. In a unipolar world, the trade signals that emanate from any importing country set the trend. If India is willing to import what can be classified virtually as cattle feed at foodgrain prices, why shouldn't the trade make hay while the sun shines?

Knowing well that quality is not an essential criterion for foodgrain imports into India, a delegation of the US Wheat Growers Association has succeeded in urging the government not to follow the sanitary and phytosanitary standards prescribed by the World Trade Organisation. India has more or less accepted their plea to allow imports of substandard wheat, as was being made available under PL-480 aid programme. In other words, the Gujral Government has accorded legitimacy to an international scandal.

To say that the Australian wheat will be consumed in the non-wheat growing areas and would arrive in India only when the sowing season is over is merely an eyewash. In a country where even plant quarantine is not properly regulated, to confine the imported wheat to a particular region will prove to be impossible. Imported wheat, contaminated with the seeds of weeds, will certainly spread the menace far and wide. Several of the minor weeds that came into the country along with wheat imports in the past have turned into biological nuisances. Phalaris minor in wheat is one such weed, which is now responsible for reducing wheat yields by 25 per cent. Still more worrisome is the fact that the weed has become resistant to chemicals.

The wild-growing Lantana camera and Parthenium shrubs (popularly called Congress grass) too have so far resisted all efforts to control their spread. Huge sums have been spent to eradicate these alien weeds, to no avail. Bringing in new weeds is, therefore, fraught with unforeseen dangers for ecology as well as the economy. But then, the Union Cabinet that cleared the import of the Australian wheat carrying weeds is not accountable for the environmental damage that its decision will inflict.

Strangely, all the diseased and contaminated grain that is being exported to India will not stand the stringent quality standards of the West for cattle feed imports. In any case, Indian wheat shipments have often been rejected by the erstwhile Soviet Union, Jordan and several other countries for its failure to conform to quality parameters. Instead of worrying about what sort of signals would emanate if the shipment were to be returned, the importing countries have always insisted on satisfaction on quality. Ironically, much of the wheat that is imported by the west from India is actually for cattle. And yet, there is no compromise on quality.

While the developed countries, keen to export substandard agricultural commodities to India, have attained a reputation for quality of life, India has no qualms about its deteriorating health and environment. With all kinds of rubbish being imported into India, including foodgrains, the disastrous consequences that awaits the people and their future generations appears to be nobody's concern. Whether it is industrial technology or import of hazardous and toxic wastes, or food products, India has become a dustbin for obsolete technologies and unhealthy foods. This is the price a nation has to pay for not sending the right signals to foreign traders.

The writer is author of `The Famine Trap'

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.