Arnold Schwarzenegger can sleep easy. The life science multinational, Monsanto, has decided to not put terminator seeds on the marketplace. For now, terminator will remain the exclusive trademark of Schwarzenegger?s murderous Hollywood android. Any applause from the bodybuilder has been drowned out by cheering environmentalists. Ever happy to avoid holding a hot potato, Indian bureaucrats are also relieved. Terminator technology, of which there are several different types, uses genetic engineering to render parts or all of a seed sterile. Though much in the limelight, terminator seeds occupy a small room in a much larger building. That structure is the new agricultural revolution being created by genetically modified seeds and crops. This larger debate underpins terminator hysteria. The fear of Frankenstein food is strongest in Europe. Thanks to the via media of green groups this contagion is spreading worldwide, India included. The green case against transgenic tinkering, where genes from different species are mixed, in a nutshell is that it is ?unnecessary, unnatural, unwanted and unsafe.? Transgenic crops are unnecessary in the West. The problem there is an excess of food. The third world is patently different. In India the green revolution has run its course. Yields are plateauing. Fertilizer and pesticide costs associated with such farming are poisoning the soil and driving farmers into debt. India?s population is once again growing faster than its harvest. Greens tout organic farming. But such produce carries a 20 to 30 per cent higher price tag. Affordable to a Westerner, starvation for a third world resident. Some nongovernmental organizations recognize this truth. In May, a cluster of them, with the United Kingdom?s Nuffield Council of Bioethics, issued a report saying the use of genetically modified crops in developing countries was a ?compelling moral imperative.? The unnatural argument is romantic tosh. Agriculture is all about using artificial ways to overcome the limits of natural food sources. Almost nothing humans eat is the way it existed in nature. Even cabbage is the result of Roman selective breeding of kale. Putting fish genes into tomato may seem to represent a quantum leap in human interference. But biologists have shown that genes migrate between species quite frequently. In any case, the green revolution?s hybrid seeds also blurred species. Triticale wheat merged 25000 wheat genes with 25000 rye genes. In comparison, transgenic crops and terminator technology play around with only one or two genes. The only place transgenic crops are unwanted today is Europe. This phobia is born of recent food scares over contaminated Coke and mad cow disease ? none of which had anything to do with biotechnology. In the US, where transgenic crops are widespread, consumers are unbothered because of greater faith in their regulatory agencies. Developing countries are more concerned about farm production than genetic hairsplitting. Monsanto recently polled Indian farmers to find that 92 per cent held biotechnology to be beneficial. The company found that politicians, NGOs and regulatory authorities were the most suspicious. Scientists and bureaucrats stood with the farmers. Other third world countries have no doubts where their interests lie. China, now a net food importer, is aggressively sowing transgenic seeds everywhere. Argentina and Brazil are big planters of genetically tinkered soya. Are transgenic crops unsafe for humans? Answer: despite several years of testing there is no evidence that they are. Environmentalists tout one UK scientist?s claim that mice fed genetically modified potatoes developed deformities. But the experiment was later discredited by a review panel. More conclusively, no scientist has been able to replicate his results. The strongest danger posed by transgenic crops is environmental. This is the superweed argument. Monsanto and other firms have produced crops resistant to specific weedkillers. If the pollen of such a plant mates with a wild cousin, the result could be herbicide resistant weeds ? a farmer?s nightmare. Such problems have occurred with hybrid seeds. And there is new evidence that controlling the spread of transgenic pollen is much more difficult than predicted. Remember, the worst problem with biological pests is that they reproduce. Into this breach could step the terminator seed. Terminator technology would render seeds sterile or ensure the modified gene ? such as one that makes a plant herbicide resistance ? cannot be passed on to future generations. In the same way the eunuchs? inability to father dynasties made them confidants of kings, nature?s reign has nothing to fear from sterile seeds no matter how much their insides are tinkered with. Terminator technology, in other words, could be the best failsafe against a Frankenstein plant that escapes into the woods. This potential alone makes it questionable if the ban on terminator seeds is in India?s interests. India?s leftwing fringe has other arguments against terminator seeds. One is that since farmers will get only one harvest per seed, they will become enslaved to multinational firms. But Indian farmers already buy anew with each harvest because yields from hybrid seeds plummet after the first sowing. In any case, as the organized sector represents only a fraction of India?s total seed market, talk of multinational domination is an exercise in paranoia. No doubt Monsanto and its ilk see in terminator seeds a means to ensure they get a profit. Sterile seeds would be useful in countries like India where farmers are unlikely to respect breeders? rights and there is a thriving black market in seeds. But there is greater danger for the third world if such companies fail to get a profit for their seeds: they will simply withdraw from the seed developing business altogether. A quiet crisis facing the third world is that the West is increasingly unwilling to invest in agricultural biotechnology. Its governments are cutting back on research expenditure, letting the private sector take up the slack. But with the West flush with food, private firms see little point in developing higher yield seeds. Better to spend such funds on the next Viagra. The consequences are already visible. For example, the budget of the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines has fallen 40 per cent this decade. If countries like India ensure the likes of Monsanto cannot make money selling seeds to the third world then private sector funding of seed research will dry up. But the private sector is needed. Developing country governments lack the necessary money and technology. The NGOs can talk theory, but cannot deliver seeds. The National Seed Corporation and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research sells seeds that are 10 to 25 years old to farmers. They flop so often that Indian farmers are openly suspicious of government products. There are two trends every Indian should worry about. One is a population set to become the world?s largest in 2025. The other is agricultural yields that refuse to increase. Though most do not realize it, they are already dependent on genetically modified crops bridging this gap. India should be fighting green attempts to restrict transgenic crop. It should be promoting private sector investment in such technology. It should also take precautions against superweeds. But present official response to biotechnology runs counter to all these. New Delhi is indecisive about transgenic grain imports. It bans terminator technology. It takes ages to clear transgenic seed imports. India?s waffling on biotechnology is not caution, it is criminal.