Address for Correspondence:

134, Tower 10, Supreme Enclave, Mayur Vihar Phase- I, Delhi- 110091 
 

To,

Shri Sitaram Yechury

Member

Communist Party of India (Marxist)

A.K. Gopalan Bhawan

27-29, Bhai Vir Singh Marg, New Delhi 110 001                              January 3, 2007 

Subject: Concerns regarding the Seed Bill 2004 

Dear Sir, 

This is with reference to your Party’s intention to study the recommendations of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture on the Seed Bill 2004. While we strongly second the Committee’s opinion that the said Bill cannot be passed in its current form, we would like to raise some concerns not only regarding the Bill but also on some recommendations of the Committee. 

Looking at the report of the Committee at firsthand it seems very encouraging and progressive. But we don’t agree with the basic premise that saying “NO” to the Seed Bill necessarily implies saying “YES” to PVP (plant variety protection) laws! Of course farmers rights need to be guaranteed, but not through making operative PVP=IPR laws. What is required is safeguarding peasant interests per se, not negotiating supposedly better terms within the very market system that creates the problems in the first place!  

The Standing Committee strongly recommends (page 5) that the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act, 2001 (PPVFR) “should be made operative first”. It needs to be understood that the PVPFR Act is a part of the whole regime to create an IPR environment, which protects the interests of plant breeders and biotech companies and not the small farmers. If on one hand the Seed Bill is being revisited on the ground that farmers’ freedoms vis-à-vis seed should be untouched, with the very same logic even the PVP Act should be opposed! PVP (plant variety protection) is an IPR which reduces seed & planting material to private property. This is something our farming cultures are fundamentally opposed to. Supporting PVP in principle, even if the law has a farmers’ rights chapter, means endorsing the privatisation of plant material. Farmers’ freedoms must be seen over and above trade and IPR laws and not circumscribed by the latter. If more and more private enterprises or even state institutes are allowed to claim ownership and economic control over plant varieties through the institutionalisation of PVP, it implies that less and less pure free farmer material is available to be shared and exchanged. Such a situation renders the farmers’ rights provisions in the PVP law meaningless. 

Seeds laws go hand in hand with intellectual property rights (IPR) regimes like plant variety protection and patents. The two kinds of laws - marketing regulations and property rights - reinforce each other. PVP gives patent-like rights to plant breeders.  

The Indian Government has been shaping its laws under supposed compulsion to comply with WTO TRIPs obligations. One such requirement was to come up with a piece of legislation that protects breeders’ IPR, which led to the passage of the PPVFR Act.

The PPVFR Act is being worshipped by some because of its one retro-fitted chapter on farmers’ and communities’ rights. But the principle that it establishes – that plant material can be privatised, is what is not only objectionable but can erode the guaranteeing of farmers’ freedoms.  

The PVPFR Act protects the intellectual property rights of the private sector over a seed variety and the Seed Bill does the job of securing the market for it. Thus the entire system of granting individual rights and corporate monopolies on seeds needs to be re-looked at.

To present a futuristic scenario that the PVPFR Act holds in actual, a small note to show how the farmers are being snatched off their rights under PVP laws in other countries in the world is attached. 

Apart from the PVPFR Act, some other concerns that we feel should be addressed: 

- The subcommittee that has been suggested by the Committee to be made to regulate the seeds prices in the Central Seeds Committee can have a few farmers’ representatives so that farmers have a say in price regulation.

- As per the Committee's suggestions (page 22), the farmers’ varieties of common knowledge “should become the property of the concerned State”. This is objectionable. These varieties should be the collective heritage of the farmers’ which the State has a responsibility to keep live, for example by preventing corporate seeds or transgenic varieties from wiping out the agrodiversity in farmers’ fields.

- The Committee Report (page 32) relieves the seed producers from getting their variety registered in each State they operate in. This should be re-considered. The socio-economic and the agro-ecological are different in each State. Besides this, agriculture being a State matter, there should be a procedure for a State-level seed committee to intervene if a seed producer is to operate in its areas. 

We hope that you and your Party would seriously consider these concerns and stand for seed legislation that do not in any way curtail farmers’ freedoms but effectively regulate the corporate seed sector.  

Looking forward to your interest in the matter. 

Sincerely,

for

Campaign for Community Control over Biodiversity 

Attached: Note on “Farmers’ privilege” under PVP regimes in various countries