Writing in India’s Deccan Herald newspaper on 26 January 2016, Kalyan Ray places great store in a flawed year-old British Parliament document to promote a pro-GM agenda. According to Ray, the document ‘Advanced Genetic Techniquesfor Crop Improvement: Regulation, risks and precaution’ from the House of Commons’ Science and Technology Committee reflects several arguments in favour of GM crops that certain Indian scientists have been voicing for years.

Indian oilseeds rose on Friday after local markets received news that the Philippine Supreme Court last week banned the import of genetically modified organisms (GMO), a move that is seen as helping India's faltering oilmeal exports, traders said.

India's Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee stands accused of Contempt of Court for evading Supreme Court orders to carry out full biosafety tests on GM crops and publish its data, writes Colin Todhunter. The immediate issue is a herbicide tolerant GM mustard now approved for large scale trials, while earlier findings remain under an impenetrable veil of official secrecy.

A group of 101 farmer organisations and activists from across India have slammed the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), India’s apex body for approving trials and commercialization of genetically engineered crops, for working in secrecy and opacity.

India's overall crop losses are expected to be light, because the states are not major producing centres, but the pest attack is inflaming debate over the usage of GM crops.

Press Release By Dr Vandana Shiva

A whitefly epidemic has devastated the Bt cotton crop in Punjab forcing farmers to use 10-12 sprays – each costing Rs 3200. This, in addition to the high cost of Bt seeds sold by Monsanto-Mahyco Biotech. In Maharashtra, Haryana and Punjab, farmers growing non Bt, desi cotton have not been impacted by pests like Bt cotton has. And organic farmers in Punjab had no whitefly attack.

Since the mid-1990s, around 300,000 Indian farmers have killed themselves—a rate of about one every 30 minutes, which is 47 percent higher than the national average. The tragedy has become entangled in the rhetorical war around genetically modified seeds.

Farmers in Punjab and Haryana are perturbed over a sense of deja vu they are experiencing ever since the attack of the pest - the whitefly - on their BT cotton crop.

Vandana Shiva examined the impact of the first Green Revolution on the breadbasket of India. In a cogent empirical argument, she shows how the ‘quick fix’ promise of large gains in output pushed aside serious pursuit of an alternative agricultural strategy grounded in respect for the environmental wisdom of peasant systems and building an egalitarian, needs-prientated agriculture consistent with the village-based, endogenous political traditions of Gandhism.

India’s government once opposed GMO crops but is now opening its doors to Monsanto and other international agriculture giants, despite widespread suffering and even suicide among farmers that feel pressured into buying their products.