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Mutant Rice and Gates’s Lab Rats: Grand Experiments in India’s Fields
Colin Todhunter
In late 2024, Bill Gates sparked outrage in India after describing the country as “a kind of laboratory to try things” during a podcast with Reid Hoffman. Gates emphasised the nation’s stability as a “testing ground” for global initiatives.
His remarks were widely condemned. Social media erupted, with many Indians accusing Gates of reducing their nation to a mere experimental ground for Western interests. Social media users labelled Indians as “guinea pigs” in Gates’ laboratory and questioned the ethics and motives behind such experimentation.
A widely reported response on X captured the sentiment:
“India is a laboratory, and we Indians are Guinea Pigs for Bill Gates. This person has managed everyone from the Government to opposition parties to the media. His office operates here without FCRA, and our education system has made him a hero! I don’t know when we will wake up!”
(FCRA refers to the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, which regulates foreign contributions to ensure they are not detrimental to the national interest.)
The controversy resurfaced with the 5 May 2025 announcement that India became the first country to officially release two genome-edited rice varieties: Kamala (DRR Dhan 100 Kamala) and Pusa DST Rice 1. These are not classified as genetically modified (GM) crops. Unlike traditional GM crops, which introduce foreign DNA, these gene-edited varieties use CRISPR-Cas SDN-1 and SDN-2 technologies to alter existing genes.
This distinction is heavily promoted by the agri-biotech industry in an attempt to ensure gene-edited crops bypass strict biosafety regulations and multi-year field trials required for GM crops. In 2022, the Indian government exempted such plants from hazardous substances rules under the Environment Protection Act.
Exempting gene-edited crops from rigorous biosafety assessments raises concerns about potential health and environmental risks. Despite this technology being praised by industry for its ‘precision’, this has more to do with PR than science. Even small genetic changes can have unpredictable effects. Indeed, Harvard biotechnologist George Church described CRISPR as “a blunt axe”, warning of serious unintended consequences and risks.
Critics argue that transparent, independent testing is essential before widespread adoption of gene-edited crops. The current regulatory exemption in India is seen as premature and potentially unlawful, especially as the Supreme Court continues to scrutinise agricultural gene editing. Campaigners claim regulatory agencies are under pressure from biotech interests to bypass safety protocols and marginalise public and scientific scrutiny.
Even though these varieties were developed by the ICAR (Indian Council for Agricultural Research), civil society groups, notably the Coalition for a GM-Free India, highlight that gene-editing tools like CRISPR/Cas9 are proprietary technologies, raising concerns about seed sovereignty and farmers’ rights. The underlying patents could increase corporate control over Indian agriculture and undermine farmers’ traditional rights to save and exchange seeds.
Concerns about proprietary rights and IPR are central to the criticism of gene-edited rice in India. The debate extends beyond biosafety and environmental risks to broader issues of farmer autonomy, seed sovereignty and the shift of control from public institutions to private patent holders.
Critics demand transparency regarding the intellectual property status of these new rice varieties and question the use of public resources via the ICAR in developing crops that may primarily benefit corporate interests. The lack of public disclosure about the development process, safety data and intellectual property details of these varieties is deeply problematic.
Veteran campaigner Aruna Rodrigues, who has long opposed GM crop commercialisation in India, warns that the government is repeating past mistakes (such as the failure of Bt cotton in the country) by pushing inadequately tested technologies without proper oversight. She has exposed regulatory failures, including the commercial release of herbicide-tolerant (HT) basmati rice without proper approval, calling such actions illegal and a violation of rules governing hazardous and genetically engineered organisms.
She has also warned that the ICAR’s actions jeopardise India’s lucrative organic rice export market and flout a Supreme Court-appointed Technical Expert Committee (TEC) recommendation for a complete ban on HT crops due to their environmental risks.
Rodrigues argues that regulatory agencies have grave conflicts of interest, with government bodies both promoting and overseeing GM and gene-edited crops, resulting in regulatory capture by corporate interests. The Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Agriculture and the ICAR all actively promote GM food crops and now gene-edited crops, while they are simultaneously charged with their oversight.
Aruna Rodrigues argues that there has been a wholesale capture of the regulatory apparatus by corporate interests, with government agencies acting as handmaidens to the biotech industry.
The Coalition for a GM-Free India and Rodrigues have repeatedly exposed failures and conflicts of interest within India’s biosafety authorities. The aforementioned TEC found major gaps in biosafety assessment and called for regulatory overhaul, yet these issues remain unaddressed many years later.
Proponents of gene-edited rice repeat claims made for GM crops: boosting yields, feeding the hungry, helping farmers and tackling climate issues. Such narratives are deliberately misleading and serve as talking points with the aim of opening India’s agrifood system to corporate control. Indian farmers’ distress is rooted in policy failures, not low productivity, and agroecological, smallholder-based systems have proven benefits in terms of climate and stress resilience and yield.
Claims of yield increases with gene-edited rice echo previous unfulfilled promises of GM crops, overlooking existing high-yielding indigenous varieties that have already contributed to substantial rice production.
The Coalition for a GM-Free India and farmer representatives challenge the claims that the two gene-edited rice varieties will lead to 25-30% yield increases, citing a lack of transparent, publicly available field trial data. They demand accountability and real-world testing, noting that India already has surplus rice production and that unverified yield claims cannot justify introducing risky gene-edited crops. The deregulation of gene-editing techniques without biosafety testing is deemed illegal and unscientific, casting doubt on the credibility of yield improvement claims.
We have seen wild claims about yield increases before in India. Developers of GM mustard at Delhi University made similar claims that were debunked via a series of affidavits submitted by Aruna Rodrigues to the Supreme Court.
Opponents accuse the government of yielding to corporate lobbying and portraying gene editing as precise and safe, despite a good deal of scientific literature highlighting risks and uncertainties (documented at length on the GMWatch.org website). India’s embrace of gene-edited crops, encouraged by figures like Bill Gates and facilitated by compromised regulatory authorities, is a case of corporate capture and regulatory subversion.
Bill Gates, a long-time advocate of genetically engineered crops, met with PM Modi in March 2025, shortly before the government’s announcement of gene-edited rice. While the sequence of events may be coincidental, Gates’s influence on agricultural biotechnology is well established. India’s future food security and ecological health depend on resisting unproven technologies and restoring regulatory integrity free from corporate and philanthropic-plutocratic influence.
Gates is often treated as royalty by the media and politicians due to his wealth, but his techno-solutionist ideology reduces complex social, political and economic problems to technical fixes. Too often, this wilful ignorance leads to “testing grounds” for interventions facilitated by co-opted governments and regulators that ultimately serve to concentrate power in the hands of corporate interests. Meanwhile, genuine solutions are sidelined and denigrated.
Many of the issues in the article above are covered in the author’s online book Power Play: The Future of Food. Kerala-based Bagha Books is distributing free print copies (in Hindi and English) across India to civil society groups, educational institutions and interested readers.
(Colin Todhunter is an independent writer and researcher. Courtesy: Countercurrents.org, an India-based news, views and analysis website, that describes itself as non-partisan and taking “the Side of the People!” It is edited by Binu Mathew.)
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Gene-Edited Rice Sparks Alarms: Scientists Back Activists, Warn of Hidden Dangers
Rajiv Shah
Growing apprehensions over the safety and regulation of genome editing in agriculture have reportedly received “validation” from peer-reviewed scientific studies, backed by civil society advocacy efforts. The Union Government’s recent announcement of gene-edited rice varieties has triggered critical responses, notably from the Coalition for a GM-Free India, which hosted a webinar to assess the implications of gene editing in Indian agriculture. The session, moderated by noted activist Kavitha Kuruganti, brought together scientists and agroecology practitioners who cautioned against the premature rollout of gene-edited crops without robust biosafety assessments.
Dr Krithika Yegna, a biotechnologist formerly affiliated with the Centre for Biotechnology at Anna University, emphasized that genome editing technologies like Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) are not as precise or predictable as often claimed. In her detailed presentation, she highlighted growing evidence that such edits can result in large-scale genetic damage, citing multiple peer-reviewed studies showing off-target mutations, unintended insertions, and complex genomic rearrangements. These risks, she argued, demand stringent regulatory oversight rather than exemptions from existing GMO norms.
Echoing these concerns, agroecologist Soumik Banerjee spoke about the socio-economic and ecological implications of introducing gene-edited rice varieties. He drew attention to how such technologies threaten India’s indigenous seed diversity and undermine farmer autonomy. He stressed that the central issue is not just scientific risk but also the disruption of existing sustainable agricultural practices rooted in biodiversity and community knowledge systems.
These public concerns, says GM Free India in a detailed note, resonate with mounting international scientific findings. Thus, Research by Kosicki et al. (2018) and Höijer et al. (2021) has demonstrated that CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing can result in extensive deletions, insertions, and chromosomal damage in human and animal cells. Samach et al. (2023) extended this evidence to plants, finding that CRISPR editing caused chromothripsis-like effects in tomatoes—a catastrophic rearrangement of genetic material that could have dire consequences for crop biochemistry and food safety.
In gene-edited rice, specifically, a study by Biswas et al. (2020) revealed a wide array of unintended on-target and off-target mutations, including large deletions and rearrangements, even when using supposedly stable transformation methods. The findings underscored the unpredictability of gene editing, which could impact not only the targeted traits but also unintended gene functions, possibly resulting in toxic or allergenic compounds.
Similarly alarming findings came from the case of hornless gene-edited cattle. A Nature Biotechnology paper by Norris et al. (2020) exposed that plasmid DNA, including antibiotic resistance genes, had unintentionally integrated into the animals’ genomes—an error missed by the developers but caught by the US FDA. This raises critical questions about self-regulation and transparency in the gene-editing industry.
During the webinar, both Dr Yegna and Banerjee urged policymakers to heed the global body of research calling for caution. They pointed to the need for long-read genome sequencing, environmental risk assessments, and mandatory food safety trials before any commercial release. GM-Free India’s documentation accompanying the webinar further underlines the importance of democratising science and empowering farmer communities in decisions that directly affect their seeds, livelihoods, and ecosystems.
Studies from Europe reinforce these views, says GM Free India. A 2023 review by Koller et al. in Environmental Sciences Europe asserted that new genomic techniques (NGTs) can produce both intended and unintended genetic effects, which may interact in unpredictable ways when released into shared environments. Another review by Eckerstorfer et al. (2021) warned that the assumed precision of gene editing is misleading and that gene-edited organisms must be subject to full biosafety scrutiny under GMO frameworks.
The advocacy by GM-Free India thus seeks to align with global scientific consensus urging caution. Robinson, Antoniou, and Fagan (2018) note, there is no scientific consensus on GMO safety, and the same applies to new gene-editing methods. With insufficient empirical data on food safety and environmental effects, especially in gene-edited plants, moving forward without regulation would be both premature and potentially hazardous.
In conclusion, the convergence of scientific evidence and grassroots advocacy paints a clear picture, believes the advocacy group: genome editing is neither inherently safe nor sufficiently understood to warrant deregulation. The Indian government’s push for gene-edited rice must be re-evaluated in light of these warnings, it insists. Both the precautionary principle and democratic accountability demand that such powerful technologies be subject to rigorous, transparent, and independent oversight before they are allowed into farmers’ fields and citizens’ food plates.
(Rajiv Shah is a senior Indian journalist. Courtesy: Counterview, a newsblog that publishes news and views based on information obtained from alternative sources, which may or may not be available in public domain, allowing readers to make independent conclusions.)
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Bt Cotton in India is a Monumental Catastrophic Failure
Colin Todhunter
On 9 July 2025, Union Agriculture Minister Shri Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced a meeting to discuss cotton production in India. He invited suggestions from farmers to enhance cotton productivity
In a video message, he stated:
“The productivity of cotton in our country is currently quite low. In recent times, the productivity has declined further due to the TSV virus affecting BT cotton. Cotton production is declining rapidly, putting our farmers in acute distress. It is our resolve to increase cotton production while reducing input costs as we aim to develop climate-resilient, high-quality seeds that can withstand viral attacks.
“To address this issue, we have convened a meeting on July 11, 2025, at 10 am in Coimbatore. This meeting will include representatives of cotton-growing farmers, farmer organisations, renowned scientists from Indian Council of Agricultural Research (including the Director General of ICAR), agriculture ministers from cotton-producing states, state government officials, representatives from the cotton industry, and agricultural university experts.
“My dear sisters and brothers, we are deeply engaged in finding ways to improve both the productivity and quality of cotton. If you have any suggestions on this matter, please call and share them on our toll-free number: 18001801551. I will consider your suggestions with utmost seriousness, and together, we will prepare a comprehensive roadmap to enhance cotton production in our country.”
In response, Aruna Rodriques, Lead Petitioner in the Supreme Court for a moratorium on GMOs, asked Professor Andrew Paul Gutierrez to write to the minister.
The professor begins by stating that he has no vested interests in the cotton industry and is not an ‘anti-GMO activist’.
Gutierrez is a biologist with more than 40 years of experience in cotton research globally and says he has studied Indian cotton production intensely over the past ten years because he was alarmed by the low yields and the massive number of farmer suicides.
Below is Gutierrez’s perspective on the problems and proposed solutions as presented to the minister (with my highlights in bold).
Problems
- The major problem appears to be collusion between the seed companies and the Regulatory and research establishment in India leading to detrimental effects on farmer welfare (e.g., hybrid cotton, GMO Bt hybrid cotton, sub optimal low planting densities, low yields, and suicides due).
- Hybrid cotton is extremely expensive and unique to India leading to sub optimal planting densities due to high seed costs. Hybrid cotton was implemented with false promises of increased quality and yield, and while fertile, the saved hybrid cotton seed produces highly variable cotton and hence the seed is not replanted. Hybrid cotton in India is an industry value capture mechanism that traps millions of farmers and saves the seed companies from having to pursue intellectual property rights violations in court against millions of small farmers. In contrast, fully fertile open pollinated varieties are grown globally, but farmers replanting save seed makes them liable to expensive litigation that in most cases is not possible in India due to small farm size (value).
- Before 2002 and the introduction of Bt hybrid cotton, outbreaks of pink bollworm (PBW) and American bollworm (ABW) resulted from industry marketing of insecticides that induced ecological disruption, insecticide resistance, and massive outbreaks of the highly damaging American bollworm. The genetic insertion of Bt genes in hybrid cotton for control of cotton pest was proposed as a solution to ABW and PBW that are native to India. But now hybrid Bt cotton has failed in India for many reasons (below).
- Pink bollworm is the major pest and resistance to current hybrid Bt constructs is high across India, and insecticide use has increased with associate disruption resulting in still newer induced pests (whitefly, jassids, mites, etc.) and continued low yields. Resistance to Bt toxins in pink bollworm is rampant because the small farm cropping system in India does not allow for refuges for preserving susceptibility to the toxins – refuges are a stop gap mechanism at best designed to delay resistance development.
- The widespread adoption of hybrid cotton has led to the loss of native cotton varieties adapted to local conditions over hundreds of years.
Potential solutions
- End adverse seed industry influence on cotton research and reward Indian scientists for on field solutions beneficial to all cotton farmers. Develop industry free extension services.
- End hybrid cotton production and adopt low cost open pure line pollinated short season varieties.
- The use of short-season high density plantings of open pollinated cottons in rain-fed and irrigated cotton should be developed that avoid PBW infestations.
- Field variety x density trials should be conducted for non-hybrid Desi and non-native varieties that could double yields (e.g., see fig. below) and reduce insecticide use.
- Weather driven computer system models should be developed to aid in crop production and pest management strategy assessment – some are available.
- Bt cottons could be implemented in straight open pollinated varieties and allowed to compete with other strategies 4 and 5 above. Likely, the GMOs would fail.
- Tube well ground water depletion should end – it will be needed to cope with climate change. I hope these insights are useful.
[Colin Todhunter is an independent researcher and writer. His open access online books on the global food system can be read on Figshare. Courtesy: Countercurrents.org, an India-based news, views and analysis website, that describes itself as non-partisan and taking “the Side of the People!” It is edited by Binu Mathew.]
