Imagine a typical Indian farm. The farmer sowed the seeds a couple of weeks ago, and now the first few leaves are blossoming. Suddenly, the farmer notices a few pests on some of the plants. He needs to act fast and hence unleashes a spray of pesticides on the farm. A few days later, he notices that some of the pests have survived. So, he sprays again, with an even heavier dosage this time. Sometimes, with a second chemical mixed in “just to be sure.”
It is easy to mistake this behaviour as driven by ignorance or indiscipline. But, in a system that has locked farmers into using pesticides by volume, what else are they supposed to do?
That is just the start of the paradox of pesticides in India. Snooping through the policy papers reveals that successive governments have emphasised reduced chemical use, targeted application, and safer pest management. Sustainability, residue control, and export compliance now feature prominently in official discourse.
But what happens in Raisina Hills rarely reflects on the ground. The farmers are still buying and using pesticides that are 30 to 50 years old.
Green Revolution law for a sustainable era
India’s pesticide regulations were forged during the Green Revolution, when food scarcity was the overriding concern. The Insecticides Act of 1968 was meant to ensure availability. It was the insurance that would protect farmers from catastrophic crop losses and would keep India fed.
At the time, the strategy worked. Chemical pesticides helped slash yield losses that once approached 80% in fruits and over 50% in vegetables. However, should the same approach be viable in a time when minimum residue limits, export rejections, ecological stress, and public health concerns are more important?
It has been five decades since the Green Revolution changed Indian farming forever. And yet, the legal framework has barely evolved from the bygone eras. Multiple attempts to replace the 1968 Act, once in 2008 and again in 2020, failed to cross the legislative finish line. The result was a regulatory limbo: a modern, $5-billion pesticide market governed by rules written for DDT-era chemicals.
The Pesticide Management Bill, 2025, is therefore significant. It introduces digital registration, lifecycle oversight, accredited testing, and clearer accountability across manufacture, sale, and disposal. On governance, it is a genuine step forward. But can governance fix a problem that lies within chemistry itself?
Why pesticide reduction fails before it begins
According to the bill, there is focus on farmers using fewer pesticides, precise use of chemicals and reducing the exposure of risk to humans and ecosystems. But where the policy falls flat is that they assume that India’s chemicals have the said precision. A brief study of India’s chemical inventory tells a different story.
A substantial share of registered pesticides in India consists of molecules introduced 30 to 50 years ago, such as organophosphates, carbamates, and other early-generation chemistries. These products are inexpensive, widely manufactured, and deeply embedded in farmer practice. Their patents expired long ago. Their production costs are low. And their effectiveness depends on high application rates.
On the contrary, modern green molecules, developed, tried, tested and deployed in developed countries across the world, operate on a very different chemical path. They target specific pests, degrade faster, and work at a fraction of the dose, sometimes under 10 grams of active ingredient per hectare. But they struggle to displace older products because they are more expensive upfront and compete in a market where price drives choice.
This creates what policymakers rarely acknowledge: a volume trap.
When the cheapest options require spraying more frequently, total chemical use rises even when the stated goal is reduction. Over time, pests develop resistance to these older molecules, prompting farmers to further increase doses or shorten spray intervals. This phenomenon is often described as the pesticide treadmill.
In addition, climate change only accelerates the cycle. Higher temperatures increase volatilisation and reduce on-field efficacy, pushing farmers toward even greater application. What you get is a predictable outcome while reduction only exists on paper.
When fake pesticides quietly inflate use
If legacy chemistry is one pillar of the volume trap, spurious pesticides are the other. Industry estimates suggest that a quarter to a third of pesticides sold in India by volume are non-genuine, mostly counterfeit, adulterated, or substandard. These products are cheaper, poorly labelled, and difficult for farmers to identify, especially in informal retail markets.
When a counterfeit spray fails, what farmers do is blame the pest, the weather or their resistance. They respond by spraying even more, often at higher doses, sometimes mixing multiple chemicals in search of a “knockdown” effect. In this way, the spurious market systematically increases chemical volumes in the produce, undermining both environmental outcomes and policy intent. No reduction strategy can succeed while a shadow market continues to reward quantity over efficacy.
The quiet problem of crops with no labels
Another driver of overuse rarely enters public debate: crop specificity. India grows hundreds of crops, but pesticide registrations are tied to individual crops, and data generation for each label claim is expensive. Predictably, manufacturers focus on major staples such as rice, wheat, cotton, soybean. This leaves most horticultural, spice, and speciality crops without approved usage guidelines.
For these crops, farmers are forced into off-label use because they have no legal alternatives when pests strike. Off-label use comes with no official dosage, no waiting period, and no residue benchmark. It is one of the primary reasons Indian exports face repeated rejections in international markets.
Other countries addressed this problem decades ago through crop grouping. It is a system that allows safety data from a representative crop to be extended to related crops with similar residue behaviour. For example, China has developed a national crop grouping standard that their farmers have to adhere to. India’s failure to adopt this approach pushes farmers toward older, broadly registered molecules that “work everywhere,” even if inefficiently. Once again, the system nudges farmers towards volume.
Why banning a few pesticide molecules won’t fix the system
India has banned or restricted certain hazardous pesticides over the years. These decisions matter. But they are episodic, often reactive, and insufficient to break structural dependency.
What is missing is a predictable, science-led process for reviewing the entire chemical inventory. Molecules registered in the 1970s still operate under assumptions from a very different scientific era. Many would struggle to meet today’s toxicological or environmental standards if reassessed.
Without mandatory periodic review, legacy chemicals persist by default. And if high-volume products remain legally available, reduction shall remain aspirational.
Making green chemistry viable
One should note that India does not lack safer pesticide alternatives. Instead, there is a reluctance and a lack of support in the conditions that allow safer pesticides to scale. New molecules require years of trials and significant investment. Yet India offers little data protection, allowing generics to rapidly piggyback on innovator datasets. This weakens incentives to introduce the latest low-dose technologies.
At the same time, biological and biopesticide products face regulatory pathways designed for synthetic chemicals, discouraging smaller manufacturers and slowing adoption. If reduction is the goal, regulation must actively favour precision. The system must enable faster approvals, differentiate requirements and promote conditions that reward lower volumes rather than cheaper bulk.
The last mile: how pesticides are applied
Even the best chemistry fails if applied poorly. Most Indian farms still rely on self-application, often with uncalibrated equipment and minimal protective gear. The result is drift, overspray, and exposure, which are costs borne by farmers themselves.
The 2025 Bill’s provisions for professional pest control operators, digital monitoring, and traceability point toward a better model. Precision tools like drones and GPS-guided spraying can reduce chemical use dramatically. But once again, all this works in tandem only when paired with modern, low-dosage formulations.
Old chemistry and precision technology are a poor match.
What the Pesticide Management Bill ultimately confronts
The Pesticides Management Bill, 2025, is a long-overdue correction to outdated governance. But its real test lies beyond licensing and enforcement. India’s pesticide challenge is a failure of enforcement. The whole industry is at a tipping point because everything, the chemistry, the economics, the counterfeit markets, and the regulatory gaps, all of it push only for volume.
Until that changes, a reduction in pesticide use will remain a slogan used to win elections.
