Why India fell behind in the cotton race – an aversion to science and technology

Cut to 2024-25, when India’s output is projected at 29.5 mb, the lowest since the 29 mb of 2008-09. Also, imports at 3 mb would surpass exports of 1.7 mb. In short, we are back to being a net importer of the natural fibre. A country that had turned the world’s no 1 producer in 2015-16 and a close second biggest exporter to the US by 2011-12 has today been “inundated” by American, Australian, Egyptian and Brazilian cottons.

How did India become a pre-eminent producer and exporter of cotton? The answer is technology. India has had some of the finest cotton breeders. C T Patel developed “H-4”, the world’s first cotton hybrid released for commercial cultivation in 1970 and obtained from crossing two Gossypium hirsutum varieties, Gujarat-67 and American Nectariless. B H Katarki bred “Varalaxmi”, the world’s first inter-specific cotton hybrid — a cross between a hirsutum (Lakshmi) and barbadense (SB298 E) species variety of the same Gossypium genus — that was released in 1972. Before them was the legendary Labh Singh — his “LSS” (Labh Singh Selection) variety, released in 1933, was grown extensively in Punjab and been used for hybridisation even in Pakistan.

This tradition of openness to new technologies and breeding innovations also enabled the commercialisation of genetically modified (GM) Bt cotton hybrids in India. The first of these — incorporating a gene isolated from a soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis, producing proteins toxic to the deadly American bollworm pest — was planted from the 2002-03 crop season. This was followed four years later by GM hybrids based on a second-generation Bollgard-II technology, deploying two Bt genes to confer protection against the Spodoptera cotton leafworm pest as well.

Bt cotton’s widespread adoption — covering some 95 per cent of the country’s total 12 million hectares under cotton cultivation by 2013-14 — led to the fibre’s second revolution: If H-4, Varalaxmi and other hybrids helped more than double the national average lint yield from 127 kg to 302 kg per hectare between 1970-71 and 2002-03, Bollgard pushed it up further to 566 kg by 2013-14.

It is unfortunate that India’s cotton production has been on a downward slope from the peaks scaled in 2013-14, falling to an average of 33.8 mb during the last five years and below 30 mb in 2024-25. National lint yields, too, have plunged to sub-450 kg per hectare. This is a disaster, in a land where references to karpasa (raw un-ginned cotton) and Karpasika (the country of cotton) date back to the 10th-century physician Surapala’s Vrikshayurveda and even the Mahabharata. And it is a disaster caused not by Marx’s “British intruder”, but largely self-inflicted.

The slide began during the second term of the UPA government, which announced a “moratorium” on GM Bt brinjal, overruling the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee’s go-ahead for its planting by farmers. For the first time, credence was given to “public consultations” — hearings mostly attended by environmental activists and so-called swadeshis — over scientific validation and evaluation. The surrender to Luddite interests has been taken to another level under the NDA, with even field trials of GM crops being halted. The treatment of GM crops as “hazardous substances” under the Environment Protection Act, 1986 — again guided by a fear of the unknown rather than evidence-supported scientific opinion — hasn’t helped either.

It’s not only cotton or Monsanto-Bayer’s GM technologies that have been at the receiving end. A host of other GM crops and even indigenously developed transgenic events —from Delhi University’s hybrid mustard and cotton claiming higher levels of Bt “Cry1Ac” protein expression than Bollgard, to the Lucknow-based National Botanical Research Institute’s whitefly and pink bollworm-resistant cotton — have struggled to jump through regulatory hoops, erected ostensibly to safeguard against the “risks” their release may pose to the country’s agricultural ecosystems, biodiversity and human and animal health.

With the courts also stepping in to decide on matters best left to those with technical expertise and domain knowledge, the regulatory deadlock has been total: Even after three seasons of confined field trials from 2010-11 and submission of a 3,285-page dossier with biosafety data generated by the breeder in 2015, GM hybrid mustard is still be planted in farmers’ fields. The same goes for cotton; no new technology has been approved after Bollgard-II in May 2006.

Those chickens have come home to roost. India’s cotton imports have doubled in value during April-January 2024-25 over April-January 2023-04 (from $518.4 million to $1,040.4 million) alongside the dip in exports (from $729.4 million to $660.5 million). There were indications of the pink bollworm becoming an emergent threat to cotton cultivation, right from 2014 in the country’s central-west and southern regions, and from 2018 in the north zone. By the time the infestations assumed serious proportions, the damage from blocking breeding efforts, citing risks based on presumption as opposed to concrete evidence, was done.

The ultimate beneficiary of India turning a net importer would be the world’s top exporters, the US and Brazil. They — the former in particular — are likely to push for removal of the 11 per cent import duty now on cotton. India had, in August 2021, permitted imports of 1.2 million tonnes of soya meal and cake derived from GM soyabean. One can expect similar pressure to allow imports of GM corn as well in the coming days — in the name of easing non-tariff barriers.

All this while, the Indian farmer has been denied access to technology. Nobody asked him then, nobody will today. Will the activists who blocked the field trials of GM crops block the entry of GM soyameal and corn through Nhava Sheva or Visakhapatnam ports?

harish.damodaran@expressindia.com