Bangalore: Prof M D Nanjundaswamy, a leading architect of the farmers' movement in Karnataka who fought against multinational companies, died after a prolonged illness at a hospital in Bangalore today (Feb 3, 2004), family sources said.

Sixty-eight year old Nanjundaswamy who was in the Kidwai Memorial Institute of Oncology hospital breathed his last this morning after his condition deteriorated last night, sources said.

A professor of Law, Nanjundaswamy played key role in giving a shape to a strong farmers' movement in the 1980s and took up cudgels for them on issues concerning the peasants.

He also tried to give the movement a political muscle with the Karnataka State Farmers Association floated by him contesting the Assembly polls in the 1980s, which saw him get elected to the Assembly once in 1989.

At one point, the movement even took a militant tone, forcing the Governments to sit up and take note of their demands but as the years passed by, it tapered off and ultimately led to a split with another outfit emerging.

The later years saw a decline in the influence of the association.

Nanjundaswamy also fought a battle against multinational companies, particularly in respect of genetically modified crops, targeting companies like Monsanto, claiming that they were harmful to the interests of country's farmers.

The farmers association was also blamed for an attack on multinational Cargil Seeds Company in Bangalore in the early 1990s.

The Miss World beauty pageant held in Bangalore in 1996 also came in the firing range of Nanjundaswamy who had organised severe protests against it seeing it as an attempt to promote their products by multinationals and against the country's culture.

Eminently articulate, Nanjundaswamy was always in the forefront in taking up farmers' issues, in the context of globalisation against which he had remained a strong critic.

He had also established links with farmers' bodies in different parts of the world and frequently attended the international meets.

Nanjundaswamy is survived by his wife, a son and a daughter.