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Vinod Mathew,

AHMEDABAD, June 13

FOR the farming community of Gujarat, the adage — you reap what you sow — has all the makings of a disaster. If had its first publicised brush with transgenic cotton in late 2001, it is time to harvest the seeds it had sown perhaps inadvertently a few seasons ago. At the same time, the local businessmen have raised the barrier a few notches for the word enterprise by flooding the market with a handful of `unofficial' products which are giving the sole approved transgenic cotton variant in the country a run for its money.

There is no arguing the fact that the creation of myriad home-grown hybrids of Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) cotton was a catastrophe that was pretty much waiting to happen. But there was precious little that could have been done to save the situation as most cotton-growing parts of the State, especially the Saurashtra-Kutch belt, is once again in full white bloom as varieties of hybrid Bt cotton jostles for space. Needless to say, all this is being done quite illegally.

True, the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) has cracked the whip and has requisitioned the Gujarat Government to rein in the unmitigated and illegal multiplication of these various `desi' genetically-modified cottonseeds. However, one is faced with a general apathy at the ground level as the top brass at the State Agriculture Department has made clear its helplessness in tackling the menace.

"How can we control the transfer of hybrid Bt cotton seeds that is taking place between farmers in various parts of the State? It is not as if some half a dozen such brands which are doing the rounds in parts of Gujarat such as `rakshak' and `maharakshak' are sold from authorised shops. We cannot be expected to police the vast farmlands of Saurashtra, Kutch and south Gujarat," a senior officer in the State Agriculture Ministry told Business Line.

Quite a throw back on a similar situation that arose almost two years ago when the Central Government diktat called upon the Gujarat Government to mount a `search and destroy' operation against the rampant use of the Navbharat 151 seed that was sold at one-fourth the cost of the officially approved seed — then the lone transgressor of the law of the land. The State responded by indicating that nothing could be done prior to a `thorough' survey.

The State Government's detraction of the Central Government directive had then found an ardent supporter in the Union Textile Minister, Mr Kashiram Rana, who after consulting the State Government, ruled out the possibility of destroying the cotton grown from transgenic cottonseeds. If the Gujarat Government had trouble in containing a single illegal brand then, it is now faced with the Herculean task of blowing the whistle on thousands of hybrid variants of Bt cotton. And the task is likely to remain a technical non-starter this time round as well, if the Ministry mandarins are to be believed.

Clearly, the farming community of Gujarat feels it has nothing to fear, barring the sound and fury that is generated by the various authorities concerned. By the time all outstanding issues including feasibility assessment and areas of action get delineated and the governments at the Centre and the State sort out who is to do what, the crop will once gain disappear from the fields as it has done in the past, they say.

"Who is to determine the pedigree of the seed that we use? It is all well to throw the rulebook at us and say that only one particular Bt cottonseed should be used. But, it is up to us to actually do it. And we may or may not toe the official line - more often the latter as it would be financially crippling to the farmer to keep using fresh seeds every sowing season," said a farmer in Saurashtra.

Ultimately, it boils down to simple economics— whether the farmers should pay Rs 1,600 per 450 gm pack for the Mahyco Monsanto Biotech India Ltd's Bt cottonseed that is bollworm resistant or only a fraction of that cost and take a calculated risk with the home-grown variants. For the moment, it appears as if farmers of Gujarat prefer to go with brands, which have `nothing official about it'.

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