The disgraceful conduct of public sector scientists in faking an indigenous Bt cotton variety based on one of India’s more successful cotton variety Bikaneri Narma once again brings heaps of shame to the Indian scientific community. [...] All the Bt cottons released in India, some 360 plus now, are from the private sector and they are all hybrids. There is not a single Bt cotton from the public sector labs to reach the market. [...] The last time our biotechnology enthusiasts had covered themselves with glory was in the Bt brinjal case when stalwarts of the six science academies of the country had put together a cut and paste document with material plagiarised from promotional material brought out in support of GM technology and Bt crops.

Another cotton farmer ended his life on Thursday by swallowing pesticide ahead of the visit of a 31-member Parliamentary Committee, headed by the veteran CPM leader Basudeb Acharya in the suicide-prone districts of Yavatmal and Wardha on March 2 to ascertain the root causes of farmers suicides in the cotton belt of the region and why it continues to haunt the region despite several bailout packages. The victim, Sunil Ganesh Vasake (37) of Chachora village in Yavatmal district took the drastic step when he could not repay loans amounting to Rs 1.50 lakh, borrowed from the district central cooperative bank and the Central Bank, following crop failure and receiving a profitable price for raw cotton this year.

Blind monocropping of Bt cotton in a drought prone area, a bad monsoon and the bad state of irrigation projects are why farmers’ suicides in Marathwada and Khandesh spiked last year, overtaking Vidharbha — the symbol of distressed Indian farmers — in that regard. In 2011, the southwest monsoon was delayed and there was no northeast return monsoon. “The distress just peaked,” said Nileema Mishra, 2011 Magsaysay winner, who is immersed in agricultural issues.

President of Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti Kishor Tiwari has demanded a total ban on Bt cotton to save lives of the poor farmers in the region. He made the announcement in a crowded press conference on the eve of the Parliamentary Standing Committee’s proposed visit to Yavatmal district on Friday. The 35-member high power committee on agriculture, led by MP Basudeb Acharia, is scheduled to visit two select villages - Bham Raja and Maregaon (Sonbardi) in the district - on Friday and are expected to interact with the farmers there.

Environmental activists are bracing for a confrontation with the Government over the Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India Bill, which is likely to come up before Parliament during the Budget Session. The controversial BRAI Bill has been under scrutiny of various experts, as there has been widespread opposition to the Bill even when it was due to be tabled in the Monsoon Session of Parliament last year. There has been opposition from the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information towards this Bill as it even overrides the Right to Information Act (2005) and bypasses the citizens’ right to know and participate. The Bill has also been opposed by some MPs in the Lok Sabha, and they are likely to ramp up their opposition this time around.

A parliamentary standing committee will visit the farm suicide capital of Yavatmal on March 2. The 37-member committee, headed by Basudeo Acharya of CPM, will go to Pandharkawda and visit couple of villages to find out why farmers suicides continue unabated despite a plethora of measures taken by the government, providing relief to cotton growers of drylands of Vidarbha. [...] There are fresh worries that cotton farmers have fallen prey to monopolistic designs of multinational seed companies producing genetically modified seeds.

While hundreds of questions are being raised about the safety of genetically modified food because of lack of scientific evidence of its effects on the human body, the Gujarat government has given a no-objection certificate for open-air field trials of GM maize. [...] Government papers show that there was no need analysis done for the trials which are a violation of Environment Protection Act norms. The state agriculture minister, Dileep Sanghani, admitted that there is need for official permission from government bodies to carry out such trials. He has, however, expressed ignorance about the field trials of GM maize in the state.

India has made rapid strides in cotton production ever since adopting the genetically modified technology 10 years ago. It has also helped the country emerge as a key supplier of the natural fibre to the global market, especially China. However, the large-scale adoption of genetically modified technology is causing concern to other nations, especially in Europe. This, in turn, could begin to hurt exports of other agricultural products exports, especially ones that are organic and non-genetically modified.

With rare candour, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said that foreign activist organizations are fuelling protests at the Kudankulam nuclear power station as well as the opposition to the commercialization of genetically modified food crops in the country. While analysts say Singh’s comments on Kudankulam point to his faith in India’s nuclear programme, opposition parties see in them a reflection of the government’s failure to manage the protests.

Karnataka State Biodiversity Board, the regulatory body to implement the Biological Diversity Act, decided to drop the earlier planned legal action against US-based seed companies involved in bio-piracy. The Indian Biodiversity Authority had assured in August last year that it would initiate legal action against the US-based seed companies Monsanto and Mahyco for developing a genetically modified eggplant. The decision was taken in the 19th meeting of the board held last month.