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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

'Where are the seeds?' -R Krithika
-The Hindu

Journalist-author Meena Menon on the crisis of cotton and why India needs to go back to desi varieties

There’s a pithy summing up of Bt Cotton in Meena Menon’s 2018 article ‘A lost cotton heritage’. “Bt cotton is like Fair and Lovely,” Kamal Kishore Dhiran, an organic cotton farmer, tells the journalist and author. “Does it really change you or make you fair? Similarly Bt cotton doesn’t address the main problem of pests.”

Meena, co-author of A Frayed History: The Journey of Cotton in India, was in Coimbatore as part of the Meanings, Metaphors... exhibition and has been researching cotton since 2002 when “Ashish Kothari from Kalpavriksh and PV Sateesh of Deccan Development Society wanted a compilation of organic cotton ventures in India.” Later, when she met Uzramma of Malkha, “I realised there was a larger issue — of technology and the history of cotton after the British colonised India.”

This led to a collaboration on A Frayed History, which Meena describes as a “holistic picture of the history of cotton. It is not meant to just glorify but also help us understand where we were once and why we are where we are today, why our farmers are in such distress today....”

She explains that when the British began to use India as a source of raw cotton, a subsistence crop became a cash crop. “The reason for writing the book is to make those connections and give the context for the farmer suicides. It has a complex historical background, plus a contemporary account about policies, government interventions, lack of investment in the rural sector, privatisation of farming and more.”

With two authors, the book went through multiple iterations and edits, “but we had a clear understanding of what would be joint and individual. We collaborated on the introduction and conclusion and the history, but Malkha was entirely hers; the agrarian part and the Bt Cotton were mine.” Technology is a huge part of the cotton journey but the book itself is not too technical. Meena cheers but adds that it was “a huge battle. We did a lot of rewrites because it had to make sense to us because we are not technical people.” They did have some disagreements, though. “Uzramma felt the Bt chapters were too technical but I felt you need a proper perspective for Bt Cotton.”

Speaking of Bt Cotton, Meena points out that the problem is the monopoly. “In terms of vegetables and other crops, you still get seeds for desi varieties but, for cotton, it is very difficult.” There are organic desi cotton ventures that are working but the numbers are few. Ironically, she says, even the Central Institute for Cotton Research (CICR) admitted in a recent paper that, by 2050, we will have more desi cotton varieties, as they can withstand climate change and are more resistant to heat and water stress. But “where are the seeds?” she asks. There has to be a sustained policy backing if farmers are to go back to desi varieties of cotton, she feels. “If not a single alternative seed is available in the market, where will the farmer go?”

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