‘Dalal Farming’ Can Chart A New Environ-Friendly Route For Cotton Farmers And Liberate Them From Cotton ‘Curse’

Essentially after the recurring Bt cotton (genetically-modified cotton) debacle in northwest India, which saw the area under cotton dropping to its lowest in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan, agricultural scientists haven’t learnt any lessons. Bt cotton crop in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh too has developed resistance over the years.

I thought the gradual decline in resistance against the dreaded pest – pink boll worm and the resulting rampage by mealy bug and fruit fly (once the insect equilibrium is disturbed, even the minor pests emerge stronger) have devastated the crop time and again, agricultural scientists should have realised that the time was ripe to shift cotton farming to better known and available environmentally-friendly options.

However, more the damage, the more has been the resistance to shun GM crops. So much so that the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) has passed gag orders against working and retired scientists who question the harmful and unwanted technology.

It is widely known that pest attack not only lowers yield, but also leads to increasing indebtedness. Suicides by cotton farmers over the failure of Bt cotton crop meant to resist pest damage have been reported over the years from across the country.

Even President Droupadi Murmu has in a recent visit to Chandigarh, while applauding farmers for ushering in the era of Green Revolution in 1960s, called upon the farmers and agriculture scientists to lead the country in environment-friendly farming. Media reports rightly highlighted her call coming at a time when Punjab’s agriculture was at the crossroads – over use of pesticides and the resulting environmental contamination, especially as far as the rise in cancer cases is concerned, being among the growing cause for worry.

Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Shivraj Singh Chauhan, had earlier made it abundantly clear that there have been negative reports about the impact of GM seeds, which even some scientists have acknowledged during consultations, and knowing the overtly dependence of gullible farmers on multinational corporation for such seeds, the government will hold on till the controversial issue is placed to rest.

Still, expressing confidence in the risky GM seeds technology, agriculture scientists were among the first to react, of course mutely, to the concerns raised by the Union Minister. Despite the clear warning, I am not surprised that some farmers are routinely collected and presented before the media by these companies essentially to lobby their cause. But what comes as a shocker is that while the Union Agriculture Minister has made it absolutely clear that GM seeds have to wait, some state ministers for Agriculture continue to espouse the industry’s cause, wanting the next generation Bt-III seeds to be made available as soon as possible.

Incidentally, it is Punjab that leads the way. Wanting regulatory hurdles to be kept away, Punjab Agriculture Minister Gurmeet Singh Khudian has been in the forefront by asking for seeds of Bt-III to be made available sooner than later.

Knowing that the pressure from agricultural scientists often becomes overbearing, I still think the Punjab minister (and for that matter his Haryana counterpart) should have explored the immense possibilities of a unique environmental-friendly and long-term sustainable solution for pest control that has been evolved after painstaking research and development by a group of cotton farmers in Nidana village in Jind district of Haryana.

Named after the person who developed the distinctive cotton pest control measure, which should be a must visit for all students of entomology branch in agricultural research and studies, has now been formalised as ‘Dr Surender Dalal Keet Saksharta Pathshala’.

But I doubt if either of the agriculture ministers have visited the village. Nor have agricultural universities made it a part of its curriculum.

It was in September 2012 that I first made a visit to Nidana village. This what I wrote in my blog Ground Reality: Meena Malik is a 23 year-old graduate, who along with some 30 women of the nearby villages, partakes in a women keet pathshala. Once in a week, they spread across cotton fields in small groups early in the morning, each carrying a magnifying glass and with a notebook in hand. They identify the beneficial insects, which are mostly non-vegetarian, and count its population on a few plants. Similarly, they look for the harmful insects, mostly vegetarian feeding on the plant foliage and fruits, and based on their observations make a note of the insect diversity that exists in the crop fields.

"We have been able to identify 109 non-vegetarian insects and 43 vegetarian insects in our cotton fields," Meena tells me. An elderly lady Santosh Malik adds: "Mealy bugs are controlled by 16 kinds of beetles, 6 kinds of bugs, 7 kinds of flies and insects like praying mantis and chrysopa."

At her age, I was surprised when she brought some beetles and bugs for me to see. Explaining about how different insects adopt different mechanisms to kill, she told me how an insect called angira, black in colour, would lay eggs in the stomach of the mealy bug-one egg per mealy bug. This eats up the stomach of the mealy bug which turns red in colour and eventually dies. Besides angira, she named two other of the same kind -- fangira and jangira.

The standing cotton crop was at that time infested with mealy bug. Although over the past few years, this pest had paved the way for a multi-billion rupee business for the chemical pesticides industry, the way the women folk in and around Nidana village had controlled the deadly pest speaks volumes for human ingenuity.

I have described how efficiently women in that particular region had taken control over insect management. Later, I was part of a three-member jury that visited villages and interacted with farmers, women and children involved in Keet Pathshala activities. The jury also included former Justice S.N. Aggarwal of the Punjab & Haryana High Court and R.S. Dalal, the then member secretary of the Haryana Farmers Commission. The report the jury, presented to the Haryana government in 2015, continues to gather dust.

It was heartening to see a report, entitled: “How a ‘Pest Pathshala’ is helping cotton farmers overcome their fear of pink bollworm” (Indian Express, March 14, 2025) once again bringing back memories of the success of ‘Dalal farming’(as it is called in short). This time I hope the great learning from the farmers experiment in controlling the harmful pests in cotton with benign insects is not buried under the socio-economic and environment burden of the industry prescriptions.

It is high time the Union Agriculture Minister visits Nidana and see how a simple biological way can save cotton from the extensive harm chemical and Bt cotton (GM technology) has done to the cotton belt. Similarly, the Rythu Sadhikara Samstha (RySS) which is implementing the Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Natural Farming programme too needs to link up with the Nidana initiative, and see how jointly the programme can be multiplied across the country. ‘Dalal farming’ definitely has the potential to chart a new environment-friendly route for cotton farmers, and pull farmers out from the clutches of the ‘cotton curse’ – a deliberately laid out chakrvyuah by the pesticides industry, biotechnology companies, agricultural scientists and the policy planners.

(The author is a noted food policy analyst and an expert on issues related to the agriculture sector. He writes on food, agriculture and hunger)