Harmful repetition: Pesticide Management Bill needs a thorough revision

The Bill is its utter lack of concern over the use of perilous pesticides that have been banned in other countries

The draft Pesticide Management Bill, 2017, put out by the Union government for public comments, appears to have failed to address several issues, including key concerns of the stakeholders, especially farmers. It is more or less a repackaged version of the Bill introduced in Parliament by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in 2008; that Bill was abandoned for unexplained reasons. So it is not surprising that, much like the UPA Bill, this draft, too, does not show any marked improvement over the outdated Insecticides Act, 1968, which it seeks to replace. Nor does it incorporate some of the important