India, Pakistan sow seeds of cooperation

Genetically modified (GM) cotton may achieve what months of diplomacy between India and Pakistan could not: cooperation between the two countries, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Oct 4, 2009, 02:21:15 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Genetically modified (GM) cotton may achieve what months of diplomacy between India and Pakistan could not: cooperation between the two countries.

India’s Bt Cotton seeds that helped the country double its cotton production in seven years will soon be available to farmers in Pakistan. Bt or Bacillus Thuringiensis is a bacterium that produces crystals proteins that are toxic to many species of insects and pests.

India’s regulatory body for GM crops, Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), under the environment and forest ministry, gave permission to top GM seed companies like Monsanto, Hyderabad-based Bayer Hybrid Seeds and Aurangabad-based Nath Biogene in September to export GM hybrid seeds to Pakistan for trials.

“It provides us a good opportunity to test highly successful GM cotton seeds in a similar geographical terrain in Pakistan,” said Jagresh Rana, director, Mahyco-Monsanto Biotech. “Bt Cotton is grown on the Indian side of border in Abhor in Punjab and normal cotton is grown on a similar soil in Pakistan. One can see the difference. We have no reason to believe that India’s cotton success story cannot be replicated in Pakistan.”

With the approval, the Indian government has put to rest claims in the Pakistan media that India was unwilling to share its cotton success story with Pakistan. “Our bonhomie with our neighbours (Pakistan) on environment issues from climate change to GM is good,” said Indian environment minister Jairam Ramesh.

To improve Pakistan’s standing in the international cotton market, where it is the fourth largest producer after China, India and the United States, Indian companies were the first to get an import permit for testing of Bt Cotton hybrid seeds from the Pakistan government earlier this year.

In Pakistan’s Punjab and Sindh provinces, some untested varieties of Bt Cotton from China are reportedly being grown since 2005 without permission of the federal government. But, its results have not done farmers any good.

“It is a beginning of a new agriculture era in Pakistan,” said Rana Shafiq, general secretary of Past Indian Farmers Forum, a body of farmers from the Punjabs on both sides of the border, welcoming India-Pakistan cooperation on agriculture issues. He, however, added that like in India many civil right groups opposed introduction of GM crops in Pakistan.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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