Seedy business
Andhra Pradesh (ap) is the gauge for India’s private sector seed business (see table: India’s seed capital). Industry is concentrated here due to the state government’s encouragement since the sector liberalised in the mid-1990s. But in 1997-1998 the state witnessed the first spate of farmers’ suicides (see ‘Abetment to suicide’, Down To Earth, February 28, 1998), and one reason for crop failures was spurious seed. This led the state government, then under the Telugu Desam Party leader N Chandrababu Naidu, to create a system of signing memoranda of understanding (mou) with seed companies to ensure accountability