India’s farmers… need technological freedom. In my letter, I asked PM Modi to lift the 2010 moratorium on genetically modified (GM) crops by 16 February 2022.
Since that has not happened, today I will plant insect-resistant brinjal seedlings that incorporate Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) genes on my farm to launch the ‘Feed India civil disobedience movement’ with the slogan: “biotechnology to feed India, natural farming to starve India”. I will also issue today a rationale in the form of a paper.
It’s no exaggeration to say that almost all Indians have consumed GM food at some point in their lives. Every year, over 1 million tonnes of cottonseed oil from GM-based Bt cotton (which constitutes 95 per cent of the cotton grown in India) is consumed domestically without any harmful effect. Farmers in Bangladesh have been growing Bt brinjal for the past seven years and consumers have benefited.
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What, then, is the obstacle? Obscurantist forces — some funded by Greenpeace and others, our home-grown Ganesha-as-cosmetic-surgery fruitcakes — continue to spread lies. But India should know and understand that these people are implicated in millions of children going blind and dying early, and the continuing malnutrition in millions of Indians.
