Bt's takedown

The worst pink bollworm attack in over two decades in north India raises question over the efficacy of Bt cotton in fighting the pest it was created to resist. As the attacks become regular and severe, cultivators quit cotton farming en masse, reports

- HIMANSHU N

ON SEPTEMBER 25, after his usual afternoon siesta and a cup of tea, Shamsher Singh quietly rode his motorbike to his farm and ended his life. "I found him hanging by a rope inside the pump house," says his 17-year-old son, Jaswinder.

Just the previous day, Shamsher had found that his entire cotton crop, spread over 6.5 hectares (ha), half of which he had taken on lease, was hit by pink bollworm (Pectinophora gossypiella)-one of the most destructive agricultural pests that bores into, and devours, cotton flowers and seeds. The 40-year-old farmer of 23 ML village in Sri Ganganagar district of Rajasthan was already distressed by the damage caused to his cotton crop by heavy rain 10 days ago. "Shamsher was still hopeful of a reduced harvest. The pest attack was the last straw. He already had a debt of 18 lakh," says Balwinder Singh, Shamsher's brother. "This is the third consecutive year he has lost his cotton crop to pest attacks. In 2021, it was pink bollworm; in 2022, it was whitefly; and this year, it is pink bollworm again," says Balwinder.

Harjinder Maan, district president of the Gramin Kisan Mazdoor Samiti, seems worried as he speaks to Down To Earth (DTE). Usually, the region does not report farmer suicides as often as the country's other cotton-growing regions do, like Maharashtra. People here can recover from financial losses and distress in a few years, Maan says. "But not this year. It is the first farmer suicide in the middle of the pink bollworm attack, but it is unlikely to be the last," he warns. "Farmers in distress have been calling and I have been counselling them," he says.