Ruth Sequeira

To,

The Editor,
Times of India,
Mumbai

Dear Sir,

This is with regard to the article ‘Reaping Gold through Bt Cotton’dated August 28, 2011. It was most disappointing to see such an article which sounds almost like an advertorial, but written by a journalist of the paper being published in your newspaper. There are a few points I would like to highlight:

1) A footnote states that the article is a ‘Reprint of.. TOI Nagpur edition’. There are sufficient stories on successful ecological farmers that can be highlighted if the publication feels it has a scarcity of stories to cover and it is forced to reprint!

2) A note by the journalist mentions that the trip to Yavatmal was “arranged” by Mahyco-Monsanto Biotech, it therefore comes as no surprise that the story is one sided with no independent views and sounds like a promotional piece for Mahyco-Monsanto’s Bollgard I and Bollgard II.

3) Yavatmal is a district that has 2117 villages of which only 2 were visited. This is an insufficient and inaccurate representation of the district and a particularly bad one as the district has seen a large number of farmer suicides.

4) All the farmers mentioned in the article have land ‘anywhere between 10-40 acres and none of them was ever a marginal farmer’. The author fails to describe the plight of majority of our farmers, who are small and marginal farmers mostly dependent on rainfall for irrigation, money from private money lenders and other problems.

The appearance of this article is particularly significant at a time the biotechnology industry is trying to get the BRAI bill, favourable to industry, cleared as per news reports. It is also pertinent that a series of advertisements are being published in the Times of India, Economic Times and Mumbai Mirror. One hopes that the editorial content of this newspaper is not governed by advertising revenues alone.

As you are aware biotechnology and particularly the GM crops issue is a very contentious and problematic, with numerous problems with GM crops surfacing around the world. At this juncture it is hoped that newspapers like yours will report objectively on the issue in the true spirit of responsible journalism.


Sincerely,

Ruth

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