Cotton saga unravels

Cotton has been the biggest success story in Indian agriculture since the Green Revolution. In a country struggling with stagnant yields in most crops, cotton has been the one bright spot. Production has soared from 13.6 million bales (each bale is 170 kg) in 2002-03 to 31.2 million bales in 2010-11—a figure that catapulted India into the big league, enabling it to account for as much as 23 per cent of global production last year. Poor quality cotton with high trash content has given way to the kind of lint that the world is ready to pay good money for, allowing the country to export between 600,000 tonnes and 1.5 million tonnes of raw cotton each year after 2005.