External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar addresses a convention on ’50 Years of the Biological Weapons Convention: Strengthening Bio-safety for the World South’, in Contemporary Delhi on December 1.
| Represent Credit score: PTI
The memoir to this point: Contemporary age biotechnologies endow powers to mark biology better and, as a end result, harness biological agents to accommodate humans. Thus, biosecurity measures settle on to be upgraded.
What is biosecurity?
Biosecurity refers to the honest of practices and systems designed to deter the intentional misuse of biological agents, toxins or applied sciences. In varied words, it covers everything from safeguarding labs coping with uncertain pathogens, to detecting and containing an intentional outbreak of a pathogen. Biosecurity is no longer finest about preserving human health from pathogens, but extends to agricultural and animal health too. Biosecurity differs a little from biosafety, which is a honest of practices intended to end the accidental leakage of pathogens. A strong biosafety protocol feeds into biosecurity.
After about a instances of bioweapons construction, the Biological Weapons Convention came into existence in 1975. It grew to change into the first global treaty that no longer finest prohibited the use and construction of biological weapons of mass destruction, but additionally asked its signatories to slay present stockpiles. Over the last many a protracted time, using bioweapons has been muted.
Why does India want biosecurity?
India’s geography and ecology assemble it inclined to gruesome-border bio-risks. India’s dependence on agriculture and big population makes the possibility more uncertain. Whereas India has no longer had any explicitly identified biosecurity attack, there had been studies of the alleged preparation of the toxin Ricin (derived from castor oil) for potential use in a awe attack. This incident underscores how non-narrate actors are pursuing biological instruments, reinforcing the urgency of tough biosecurity. Extra, the mercurial unfold of biotechnologies maintain endowed humans with increased adjust over biology, increasing the possibilities of malicious actors experimenting with bioweapons construction.
The Department of Biotechnology oversees evaluate governance and safety frameworks for labs. The National Centre for Illness Shield watch over manages outbreak surveillance and response. The Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying screens farm animals biosecurity and transboundary diseases. The Plant Quarantine Organisation of India regulates agricultural imports and exports. India’s biosafety and biosecurity prison pointers embody the Atmosphere (Safety) Act, 1986, which governs perilous microorganisms and genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and the Weapons of Mass Destruction and their Birth Programs (Prohibition of Unlawful Actions) Act, 2005, which criminalises biological weapons. India has additionally developed Biosafety Principles (1989) and particular pointers had been released in 2017 for the capabilities of Recombinant DNA Research and Biocontainment. The National Anguish Administration Authority has a detailed guiding theory on the administration of biological mess ups.
India is additionally phase of worldwide platforms that emphasise biosecurity, corresponding to the Biological Weapons Convention and Australia Team.
Even when India has lots of agencies engaged in bio-anxiousness reduction, lab legislation, public-health surveillance, agriculture safety, a unified nationwide biosecurity framework is aloof evolving. Extra, many of the most contemporary insurance policies and prison pointers can maintain to be additionally up to this point to attend race with new forms of biothreats that are rising. India is for the time being ranked 66 on the World Effectively being Safety Index, and while its rating for detecting biothreats has increased, its rating for being ready to successfully answer to threats has reduced.
What are varied international locations doing?
The U.S. anchors its biosecurity framework below the National Biodefense Technique (2022-2028) which integrates health, defence, and biotech oversight. In 2024, the U.S. extra reinforced this machine thru the Federal Steering on Synthetic Nucleic Acid Screening, requiring gene synthesis companies to maintain a look at DNA orders in opposition to pathogen databases to end misuse. The European Union regulates thru the EU Effectively being Safety Framework (2022) and Horizon Europe’s twin-use evaluate pointers, embedding biosecurity in its One Effectively being mannequin. China’s Biosecurity Regulations (2021) treats biotechnology and genetic knowledge as issues of nationwide safety, mandating centralised adjust over evaluate and subject matter transfers. Australia’s Biosecurity Act (2015) provides a unified good framework across human, animal, and plant sectors, now extending to synthetic biology. The United Kingdom’s Biological Safety Technique (2023) specializes in biosurveillance and mercurial response.
What are the dangers ahead?
The anxiousness of an inadequate biosecurity apparatus is profound. It jeopardises the lives of billions of Indians. It’s subsequently needed that a nationwide biosecurity framework that coordinates actions across varied govt agencies is developed. One of these framework would additionally be ready to name infrastructure and capability gaps that settle on to be addressed. Assert of contemporary-age biodefence applied sciences corresponding to microbial forensics and new approaches corresponding to social media surveillance might perhaps possible then be accurately adopted to scamper such gaps.
Shambhavi Naik is chairperson, Takshashila Institution’s Effectively being & Lifestyles Sciences Protection
Printed – December 16, 2025 08:30 am IST
