PUBLIC S OF BIOSCIENCE Public Engagement with Governance of Biotechnology in India

Abstract

xviii newlineABSTRACT newlinePublic Engagement with Governance of Biotechnology in India newlineThe recent controversy over the illegal and unapproved use of Bt brinjal in the fields of Maharashtra has once again raised questions on the paradoxical nature of governance of Biotechnology in India. Most of the academic and policy literature on the regulation of biotechnology focuses on state institutions and procedure. In this thesis, I explore how the public is constituted in and around the governance of transgenic technologies in India and how the public engages with the regulation process. newlineTo understand the changing culture in the regulatory apparatus and the public engagement with this apparatus, I consider biotechnology as a sociotechnical assemblage which includes not only technological or scientific artifact but also socio-cultural elements, discourses, materials, organisations, procedures, norms, and events. Further, I argue that to understand the governance of this assemblage, we have to look at the matters of concerns instead of sticking on to the matters of facts . In order to explore the matters of concerns in the domain of governance of transgenic technologies we have to identify the displacement of politics, science and gene in the contemporary context. newlineI use the technographic method to explore the public of bioscience. By looking at the three phases of transgenic governance the establishment of normative institutions and regulatory architectures, Bt Brinjal public consultations, legal and judicial engagement with biotechnology regulation I explore the constitution and reconstitution of the transgenic public sphere in the context of regulatory architecture in India. newlineThis thesis is divided into two parts; the first part introduces the case of Genetically Modified (GM) Crops in India and the issues related to the regulation of transgenic technology. This part deals with the theoretical and methodological issues in understanding public engagement with the regulation of transgenic technology in the socio-po