In March 2002, when Bt cotton was approved for commercial cultivation, there was scant opposition to the Government’s decision. The few murmurs of protest from assorted NGOs and self-proclaimed farmers’ bodies were drowned by the actions of the ryots themselves. Their clamouring for the transgenic cotton seeds was indeed reminiscent of the early Green Revolution days, when the country’s premier agricultural universities reported frequent thefts and raids by farmers jostling for the new ’magic’ wheat varieties.