Bt cotton in Andhra Pradesh: a three-year assessment - IndiaGMInfo

The study and the film
Three years ago, almost to the day, when the Deccan Development Society[DDS] and the AP Coalition in
Defence of Diversity[APCDD] began their research on Bt Cotton in Andhra Pradesh with a particular focus
on the cotton district of Warangal, we had no idea what we were walking into. There was a bulldozing hype
surrounding Bt Cotton that had bedazzled the politicians and policy makers. A huge scientific lobby was
painting Bt cotton as a panacea for farmers and the environment. Corporate money and muscle wielded a
power of such magnitude that even the media had been muzzled to a considerable extent. Huge money had
poured into creating a dazzling aura around Bt cotton through a blitz of advertisements. It was an unspoken
axiom that there was no science other than biotechnology and anything that challenged it was anti-science. The
civil society in Andhra Pradesh, by and large, had very little clue about what genetic engineering was all about.
In this atmosphere, anyone who tried to find out the honest truth was labeled as a backward person and an
avoidable hurdle in the path of modernity. The APCDD and the DDS braved this hostile environment and
embarked on a quest for truth. Two courageous scientists Dr Abdul Qayum, and Mr Kiran Sakkhari, took up
cudgels on our behalf, and went about the job of unravelling the agro-socio-economic mystery of Bt cotton.
They selected a transparent and open methodology, stayed close to the farmers, and gathered information
from them on a fortnightly basis. Their data collectors were village based grassroots researchers with a deep
understanding of agriculture. No other research group on Bt cotton in this country had done season-long
studies, and a job as thorough as this. Most groups came once a while after hearing of the cotton disaster,
collected data at that point of time and went back. No one stayed continuously with farmers and farming
communities to record their changing perceptions about Bt cotton. This makes the present study a unique one
At the end of the first season, when we reported to the world the total disaster of Bt cotton in Andhra Pradesh,
one of the most famous apologists for Genetic Engineering, Dr Kameswara Rao, went philosophical in his
article One Swallow Does Not Make A Summer. The learned doctor pontificated to the lesser mortals: It is
only fair to wait till the end of the three-year period to declare Bt cotton as a success or failure. In the
meanwhile, it is certainly reasonable to assess the prospects, in a non-judgmental way, using the
commercial results and certainly not field trial data, which have served their purpose in gaining the
approval of the GEAC. If we wait till the end of the three-year period, the farmers themselves will come
out with their assessment of the benefits of Bt cotton. If the farmer is not convinced, no amount of
effort through articles in Science and Nature or the whole world body of crop biotechnologists and
governments can make the farmer adopt this technology.
We have waited till the end of the three years. Now the truth is out. And with it the jury too.. The jury is not
composed of outsiders, but the farmers themselves as the venerable Doctor had prescribed. And what is the
story that the farmers in AP are telling us with regard to Mahyco-Monsanto Bt hybrids? It is a story of terrible
loss, deep pain, and cold anger, leading to explosive violence and even death.