India’s long-running social panic over genetically engineered agricultural crops has recently intensified. In August, a parliamentary standing committee produced a report that was highly critical of a 2009 Genetic Engineering Advisory Committee (GEAC) decision to approve genetically engineered eggplant, an approval blocked for more than two years now by an edict from a former environment minister. The parliamentary committee report was delivered one day after Maharashtra had cancelled the licence of an Indian company to sell genetically engineered cotton seeds, the kind that has been grown successfully in India for a decade. Then in late October, a committee appointed by the Supreme Court, triggered by an activist PIL, recommended termination of all ongoing GM crop trials, and a 10-year moratorium on field trials of GM food crops. Last week, though, the Centre pronounced the committee’s report “scientifically flawed” and urged the Supreme Court to let crop trials continue.