Amid agrarian unrest over special economic zones and crop losses, some NGOs are mobilising support to fight genetically modified crops. In Chitrakoot district in the backward and parched Bundelkhand area in Uttar Pradesh, where villages routinely empty due to migration, an NGO has persuaded 64 villages to pledge against growing GM crops. Villagers of Chitrakoot and Banda districts gathered in Ganivan in Chitrakoot on February 8 and took the pledge administered by Forum for Biotechnology & Food Security.