Indian yields are among the lowest in the world. Monsanto's seeds will more than double them and, more important, reduce the need to spray insecticides to a fifth -- the genetically engineered seeds are immune to most bollworms, a disease which causes crop losses of over Rs 800 crore annually in India and which, interestingly, led to the suicides of farmers in Andhra Pradesh.

So what's the problem, you'll say, if you haven't been following the wild debate and the near-hysteria being whipped up by the usual environmental lobby to oppose Monsanto. What's worse, the government is actuallyhelping those trying to spread misinformation. We will not allow Mon-santo to bring in Terminator technology, thundered minister of state for agriculture Som Pal in parliament a few days ago.

While Som Pal may be trying to soothe public opinion against Monsanto, the message that goes out is: Terminator's evil, the government's trying to stop it, but who knows if they'll succeed; this is the same company that is genetically altering cotton seeds, let's oppose it as well, you never know what they've done to that, and so it goes on.

Obviously then, the main problem seems to be public perception of what's called the Terminator and not the bollworm-resistant Bollgard cotton seed that Monsanto's doing trials for in Andhra, th-ough some environmentalists in India have filed a public interest litigation arguing that genetically altering seeds sh-ould not be permitted.

To go back a little, what biotechnology co-mpanies like Monsanto are doing is to isolate various genes in crops, understand their traits, andthen add or subtract a gene in a seed, to give it certain additional qualities. So, once the experiment is successful, the plant can have natural resistance to certain pests -- Monsanto has also successfully done Roundup Ready Soybean which helps eliminate weeds, which today destroy half our soyabean crop.

With genetic engineering, you can also have vegetables with more proteins, or enriched with virus antigens. That's right, scientists at the Rosewell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, USA, have produced genetically-improved potatoes with hepatitis-B virus antigens, so at some point you can actually have edible vaccines. Similarly, you can get your protein supplement from a banana, or a beta carotene-enriched tomato.

Now this research obviously costs money, and if Monsanto's putting its best brains into it, it clearly wants to make as much money as possible. In an ideal situation, this can be done through strong patent laws. So farmers recognise that the seed they buy is patented by Monsanto, they sow itone year, and then buy fresh seeds the next year, and so on. They get improved yields and more profits and, as a general rule of thumb, give a third of their increased profits to Monsanto in the form of higher prices for seeds.

But as Monsanto itself realises, even if the law is on your side, you can't really ensure that millions of farmers buy fresh seeds each year. Having bought the seeds the first time, they can just sow the seeds their plants produce, the next time around. That's where the Terminator, incidentally a term coined by a Canadian opposed to it, comes in. The US Department of Agriculture and a company called Delta and Pine Land were working on a technology, now bought by Monsanto, which ensures that a plant will be sterile, or never produces seeds.

So once the Terminator technology is introduced in a seed, it will germinate once, produce whatever plant it is supposed to, but will not have seeds which can be planted again. So the farmer just has to go back to the seeds company, patent law orno patent law. The fear here, also being raised in other countries, is that this will destroy existing plant varieties by making them sterile.

Through wind pollination, or other means, the Terminator properties can spread to ordinary crops or wild plants. While Monsanto scientists swear this sort of `gene drift' will never happen, it may just be possible, and it's certainly not worth taking a risk, certainly not till you know how serious it is.

Condemning Monanto for this, and attacking its tested products such as the Bollgard and the Roundup Ready Soybean, however, is worse than throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Primarily because successful launch of the Termi-nator is at least a decade away, and will then go through very extensive trials.

It sounds unpatriotic, but if the authorities in the US and Europe pass it, chances are it'll be fit for India as well since their level of testing is far more rigorous. Similarly, the fact that over a fifth of all US cotton farm area -- the one most infestedwith bollworms -- is now covered with Bollgard, should convince our vocal opposition that it's safe.

In any case, it is only after a host of trials have been completed in India that Monsanto will be allowed to sell Bollgard. With our crop yields as low as they are, and a large part of them getting destroyed by weeds and pests, it would be criminal to allow well-orchestrated hysteria to deny farmers the benefits of bio-technology, which promises to revolutionise the next century. Unless, of course, we have a vested interest in keeping them poor and illiterate.