Kisan panel warn of civil disobedience

new delhi: the heads of the kisan coordination committee — sharad joshi, bhupinder singh mann and others — speaking for farmers from india’s cotton-growing states, gave a joint warning here on monday of mass civil disobedience if tuesday’s meeting of the union government’s genetic engineering approval committee (geac) did not open the legal door to buying and sowing the genetically-modified seeds.gujarat, maharashtra, andhra and punjab are the major cotton growing states and a fourth of the world’s cotton acreage is in india. if geac’s approval does come on tuesday, pest-resistant transgenic cotton would be the first genetically-modified crop approved for commercial use in india. bt cotton, as it is known, has been under field test-trials for four years now and the kcc says its members are not prepared to wait any longer, given bt cotton’s proven resistance to the bollworm, the cotton crop’s incurable nemesis. the issue took centrestage last year when yet another bollworm attack wiped out much of the standing crop, save the bt variety, which a gujarat-based firm had illegally got and sold. a government order to uproot the standing crop of bt cotton met with vigorous resistance from the farmers; in addition, those who hadn’t planted it demanded they too have access to it. the government, note incensed kcc heads, has been testing for years, without saying when these trials will end. by contrast, china has, over the last six years, approved six bt cotton seeds for commercial use. india and china both got into biotechnology testing at the same time. with the bollworm here yearly ravaging the sown crop, and the bt variety giving much higher yield, the farmers say they’ve had enough.