The Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare has recently come out with the Centre’s Pesticides Management Bill 2017 (in English) and thought of having some public feedback on the bill within 15 days, ending on March 6, 2018. It questions the very need for new legislation for regulating pesticides when the Insecticides Act 1968 exists and still in force but this act was enacted after a tragic accident in Kerala which took 102 lives in 1958 which gave birth to this act to set up safety concerns.

The apparent reasons cited for bringing in a new Bill now and not just a set of Amendments to the existing law but actually they are centered around a need to:

1. Regulate all pesticides, not just those insecticides that appear in the Schedule of the 1968 Act;
2. Lay down a condition that every pesticide should have its expected performance disclosed and usage instructions included in its application for registration;
3. Lay down a further condition that no pesticide can be registered without its tolerance limits laid down under another statute on food safety;
4. Increase penalties for different kinds of offenses;
5. Include a clause on segregation and disposal of pesticides;
6. Expand the constitution of the Central Insecticides/Pesticides Board to include new departments and farmer representatives

It requires the new bill as it cannot accommodate the old act with the help of comprehensive amendments to the existing laws. The new bill not only strengthens the state government in many ways but also empowers the state government in terms of registration and licensing of trade, to regulate marketing and advertising. The current bill falls short in terms of protecting the interests of citizens, inclusive of farmers, consumers, and their environment. It is not prescribed that the Bill should come from the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare and not the Ministry of Agriculture, which appears to be promoting the use of pesticides. In order to recast the Pesticides Management Bill 2017 the need to make few changes before it tries to protect the citizen from ill effects of synthetic pesticides.

With this new bill, there will be a focus on two things that are, Primarily the center will try making it mandatory for all agricultural-input packaging to essentially have the barcode on every given product detailing about the information relating to it. These barcodes will sync with the GST and the e-billing process. Seconly, states should make retailers register/log of all agriculture input sales syncing it with state government servers, allowing for traceability for better and regular enforcement. One must not forget the devastating effects of Bhopal Gas Leak tragedy at a pesticide manufacturing unit or the cancer trains of Punjab, But the existing Act doesn’t even allow the state or center to act in its own interests and stop pesticide sales within its own boundaries for more than 60 days. Dreadful as it is in a federal structure, the limited use and interpretation of the law which started the cancer train is still destroying lives.