BT and GM Food

Bio-Farming, Use of BT seeds

and GM Food trails

in Madhya Pradesh

Interestingly Bhartiya Janta Party, following their line of “Swadeshi” in its manifesto promising to make Madhya Pradesh first BIO-Farming state, but this election promise seems to be very contradictory to their operation policies, they have implemented in Madhya Pradesh in last 5 years. Their government has promoted the use of BT Cotton seeds and Madhya Pradesh has become one of the biggest consumers of controversial BT seeds. It is not enough; Government of Madhya Pradesh has also permitted the trails of GM food items in Madhya Pradesh. Nilesh Desai of Campaign for GM Free India says - The Jabalpur based Jawahar lal Nehru Agriculture University is doing trails of Genetically Modified Brinjals. It should be noted that the production of GM food has been opposed by the food security and environmentalists at very large level. Hundreds of Farmers and activists also protested the action to promoted dangerous GM food in Agriculture University on 29th September 2008. It also to be mentioned that now Madhya Pradesh is just providing red carpet to the upper class and industrial community. The state of Madhya Pradesh has decided to provide 3 Lac acre of land for the Jetropha (tree for Bio-Fuel) Production in Madhya Pradesh. It is going to be a big issue in near future, because the available land is not being given to the landless Tribals and Dalit families. In this context Government says – We don’t have government land to share with the marginalized communities, but practically huge amount of land (it includes agriculture, waste and forest land) is being handed over to the Corporate houses along with the tax, water and electricity subsidies.