Raw cotton imports in the first six months of the last financial year were more than exports. This is a development occurring with increased frequency. Raw cotton imports have exceeded exports for the third time in the past six years. From being a net exporter of cotton for 18 of the past 20 years, there is a strong likelihood of India becoming a net importer again, reports Vivian Fernandes.
Imports of the fibre exceeding exports need not necessarily be a concern if we are producing fine textiles to meet domestic and export demand, that require fibre lengths that we do not adequately grow.
But cotton crop production is also falling. In the 2024-25 October-September cotton year it is projected at about 29.5 lakh bales of 170 kg, a low level touched twice in the past 10 years. The latest three-year average also shows a decline in output of about three lakh bales from the peak of the three-years ending in 2013-14.
Variations in crop output occur due to changes in weather patterns but there is reason to believe that in the case of cotton it is the result of denigration of a technology that was effective in checking the menace of cotton boll borers, second-guessing the regulatory gate-keepers, innovators being made to jump higher and moving regulatory hoops, judicial scepticism of the technology, and whimsical price and royalty controls. Cotton yield per hectare is about a 100 kg less than it was 10 years ago, and the cost of cultivation is rising.
Much of this can be attributed to the resurgence of pink bollworm, a pest that if not killed at the incipient stage is virtually impossible to control because it bores and lodges inside cotton bolls, beyond the reach of pesticides, where it destroys and discolours cotton.
Farmers have tried novel methods like female sex scent dispensers which confuse male moths and reduce egg production and the insect population. But placing them is a tedious and labour-intensive activity. About 160 dispensers in the form of threads have to be placed in an acre. They are effective for 90 days after which they have to be replaced.
Making cotton plant tissue lethal to bollworms with bacterial toxins implanted in their cells through genetic modification is far more effective. The larvae are killed at the incipient stage itself before they can cause any harm. Seeds with two versions of these toxic traits were approved in 2002 and 2006, the first by Atal Behari Vajpayee’s government which added Jai Vigyan to the Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan slogan, and the second by the government of Manmohan Singh in its first term.
Thereafter, objectors to genetic modification technology led by environmental activists gained the upper hand. A prominent agricultural scientist provided wind to their sails. There was official endorsement of these misgivings from environment ministers in Manmohan Singh’s second term cabinet and in the Narendra Modi government that followed.
Price controls were imposed on the seeds that contained the toxic traits. These were necessary at first to check price gouging. But they turned vindictive as Indian franchisees draped in the cloak of nationalism sought to fix the American multinational that licensed the traits to them. At their behest, the then agriculture minister slashed the trait fee or royalty payable to the licensor.
So when there was a resurgence of pink bollworm due to the bugs developing resistance to the genetic toxins due to the pressure of survival, there was no commercially available technology to check them. The Indian associate of the American multinational that had the technology and was on the verge of getting approval to commercialise it, withdrew the application from the regulatory authority in 2016 a few months after the trait fee was slashed fearing it would not be able to profit from it, owing to controls on the price and royalty it could charge. The technology would have made cotton plants toxic to pink bollworms and also tolerant to a widely used herbicide. This would have brought down the cost of cultivation and also increased output by averting pest-induced losses.
As the pink bollworm rampaged there was pressure from farmers on the government to bring in effective technology. The company that had withdrawn the application in 2016, re-submitted it in 2022, following feelers from the government that had abandoned its earlier, anti-GM technology stance. But even three years later, it has not got the necessary permissions and will miss the cotton planting season this year too. Four other companies are also in the fray with similar traits.
The split Supreme Court judgement on genetically-modified crops delivered in July last year has not helped either. While one of the judges found no legal infirmity in the approval process, the other held the decision to be hasty, lacking in transparency, violative of public trust, arbitrary, and for these reasons, vitiated. Some of the judge’s reasons impinge on policy, which is the domain of the executive, but others reveal how a decision that should be strictly scientific was caught in the ebb and flow of ideological and political currents, inviting the judge’s censure.
Law-makers, as people’s representatives, are supposed to listen to various shades of opinion and arrive at decisions that are in the national interest. In this case, activists with little at stake have got the better of farmers, who have been forcefully agitating for the elusive pink bollworm and weed control technology.
(Top photo of cotton growing in a farm in Bhatinda by Vivian Fernandes in 2016)
This report was first published in thefederal.com
