The New Seeds Bill aims to promote the seed industry and consolidate its control over seeds by crushing farmers’ traditional rights. This move needs to be
opposed, as it would be disastrous for  seed and
food security and freedom of our farmers.

Afsar H. Jafri*

Mumbai, November 2, 2006: A new law for seeds, which further liberalizes the seed sector, may soon be a reality. The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, elected with a mandate from rural India, is now determined to provide unfettered market access to the multinational seeds industry such as Monsanto to monopolise the seed sector and contaminate our diverse genetic resources with genetically modified seeds. And this is being done at a time when farmer suicides are escalating to crisis proportions. In the last 155 days in Vidarbha in Maharashtra, (June-October 2006) 513[i] farmers have committed suicides in comparison to 86 during the same period last year. 438 farmers took their lives after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to this region where genetically engineered Bt. Cotton had created massive distress among cotton growers. The new Act is designed to promote and encourage corporate controlled, expensive, highly unreliable and ecologically disastrous genetically engineered seeds like Bt. cotton in India.

The Departmental Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture, under the Chairmanship of Prof. Ram Gopal Yadav, has submitted its final report to the Speaker of Lok Sabha on 20^th October after discussing this bill in 6-7 sittings of the committee. The report is expected to be tabled in the house in the coming Parliament session, starting on 22^nd November 2006. The Seeds Bill 2004[ii] was introduced in the Upper House of the Parliament on 9^th December 2004 and was later referred to the Parliamentary Committee for examination and report. The Committee held its first meeting to hear oral deposition from farmers, scientists and experts on 19^th and 20^th June 2006 and a few subsequent hearings. So far no details are available from the Agriculture Committee or the Speaker’s Office on the changes in the bill.

Apparently the UPA government is under constant pressure from Multinational Corporations (MNCs) like Monsanto, whose ominous presence in our government system has now been legitimized as a Board Member (from US side) of the Indo-US Initiative on Agriculture Research and Education, to get fast track clearance of the Seeds Bill 2004.

The Seeds Bill 2004 can be termed as Monsanto’s Seeds Bill because it seems to be drafted under pressure from seed manufacturing companies like Monsanto. It is certain that a lobby of multinational companies is behind the new Seeds Bill, as they see India as a large and upcoming seed market worth several thousand crores. On the pretext of increasing food production, the new Bill is drafted to benefit multinational seed companies, as evident from its stated objective, outlined by the Union Ministry of Agriculture, i.e. (i) to create facilitative climate for growth of seed industry, (ii) enhance seed replacement rates for various crops and (iii) boost the export of seeds and encourage import of useful germplasm, and (iv) create conducive atmosphere for application of frontier sciences in varietal development and for enhanced investment in research and development[iii]. The objectives  and reasons for the Bill also clearly state that the proposed legislation provides for increasing private participation in seed production, distribution, certification and seed testing[iv].

The objective to promote seed industry and consolidate their control over seeds can be achieved only through crushing farmers’ traditional rights over seed. Hence, several provisions in this Bill deny Indian farmers their right over seeds. Therefore the Seeds Bill 2004, introduced by the UPA government, which professes to be greatly supportive of farmers and their interests, is anti-farmer and benefits seed corporations.

The objective of any model seeds law should be to ensure seed security for farmers to provide equitable, affordable and timely access to good quality agricultural seed of required varieties and save farmers from dependency over seed companies for their seed supply. The proposed legislation, however, denies farmers their seed security and creates forced dependence on companies for seed, an essential input for agriculture and the foundation for the food security of a country. This Bill has therefore potential to spell doom for Indian farmers and farming.

The most controversial provision of this Bill is that it requires mandatory registration of all seeds and varieties (including farmers’ seeds) and prohibits use of unregistered seeds. As per this provision every Indian farmers has to register their seeds with the proposed national seeds authority and are entitled to use only registered seeds. Moreover this Bill prevents barter or exchange of seeds among farmers and curbs their fundamental right to save and exchange seeds. This is a “WTO plus” provision which undoes the gains for farmers under the Plant Variety Protection and Farmers Rights Act (PVPFRA) 2001. The PVPFR Act 2001 enacted under the obligation of WTO recognizes this right. The Bill also infringes the rights and freedom of farmers to grow and produce seeds, when it says, “no producer shall grow or organize the production of seeds unless he is registered”. Traditionally majority of Indian farmers generate the seeds for the next crops from the produce of the present one. This customary right of farmers to save, use, exchange and sell seeds is the foundation of our agriculture systems.

Another anti farmer provision of this Bill is that a farmer will be punished if s/he is found guilty of using, exchanging or selling unregistered seeds. In this situation, the farmer may attract punishment from Rs. 5000 which could go up to Rs. 25,000, including the liability to be searched by the Seed Inspector, appointed by State Government, who has been given powers to break open anyone’s door, enter his house and search if he feels the proposed seeds act is being violated. In India where farmers’ seeds are the main source of seeds and planting materials, such criminalization of everyday activity of farming appears to be the intent of the Bill mainly to dissuade farmers from using their own seeds and varieties and become dependent on MNC seed supply. This also shows that instead of regulating and punishing the seed industry for supply of spurious seeds, the proposed legislation is aimed at policing the farmers and declaring them criminals if they produce and sell their own seeds.

The provision for self certification is another anti farmer provision. Along with the State Seed Certification Agency, the accredited (by State Seed Committee) individual, institutions and seed producing organisations are allowed to carry out self-certification of their seeds. This means that a seed company can do self-certification without any strict monitoring. Moreover the same company may also be sitting in the Centre/ State Seed Committee which would be responsible for inspection and monitoring.

Indian farmers have faced several cases of seed failures since liberalisation and deregulation of the seed sector and the most recent example is failure of 700 tonnes[v] of Monsanto’s maize seeds “Cargill hybrid 900M” in over 140,000 acres in 11 districts of north Bihar during 2002-2003 but no punitive action was taken against Monsanto. Even if the company is found guilty of self certifying its seeds, withdrawal of their accreditation won’t be that easy. Therefore there should be no representation of the seed companies in the proposed Central and State Seed Committees.

The other serious flaw in the new Seeds Bill is that it fails to establish any strict liability on seed companies for failure of their seeds. In case of seed failure, the victim farmers, who would lose their crop and their livelihood, can only appeal for compensation under the local Consumer Court. If a farmer has to look to Consumer Protection Act of 1986 for redress, then why do we need a new seeds law? The failure of company seeds has become a general trend and the non-renewability, non-reliability and high cost of company seeds have created havoc in Indian agriculture and indebted farmers. Due to failure of company’s seeds, several thousand Indian farmers have committed suicide and many farmers were forced to sell their body organs to pay off their debts. Despite this the new Seeds Bill is neither harsh in its punitive action against the seed manufacturers nor it makes the government official liable for any of their official omission.

However the Indian bureaucracy has legally protected its interest under this bill, leaving the millions of farmers at the mercy of the seeds industry. The Bill protects government officials through its provision, which says "no suit, prosecution or other legal proceeding shall lie against the government or any person for anything which is in good faith done or intended to be done." It clearly indicate that the UPA government wants only farmers to be regulated, monitored, punished, while standing for the interests of the seed manufacturers and the government officials. Interestingly the seed companies are advocating for crop insurance therefore shifting their liability on the government who would bear the cost of insurance in case of failure of company seeds.

The ill intention of the Agriculture Ministry as well as UPA Government towards farmers is further strengthened when they provided under the proposed Act for representation of seeds companies (who should be regulated) as respectable members in the proposed Central Seed Committee while allowing only two farmer representatives, who will be nominated by the Centre Government, in the said committee. When a non-farmer and well renowned scientist, Prof. MS Swaminathan, was selected by the UPA Government to head the National Commission of Farmers, therefore it is very doubtful that a farmer would ever get nominated to the Centre/ State Seed Committees.

Ironically the new seeds legislation is being legislated at a time when farmers’ suicides are rampant in almost every state irrespective of the crop they grow. And one of the main reasons of farmers’ suicides is increasing cost of production and consequent indebtedness. In such distress agrarian situation the new Seeds Bill has come with a stated objective of “increasing the seed replacement rate” which obviously means farmers traditional seeds replaced with company seeds. In other words farmer tested, biodiverse, affordable and reliable seeds to be replaced with MNC's costly, uniform, monoculture, unreliable and self-certified seeds. The forced replacement of traditional seeds by chemical responsive hybrid and GM seeds would lead to the destruction of our biodiversity, increasing farmers’ vulnerability to climate change, floods, droughts and other environmental disasters.

The proposed legislation also fails to protect farmers from high prices of company seeds. If the Bill is introduced with an intention to regulate seed companies, then the provision of price regulation becomes obligatory, which is conspicuously missing in the new Bill. This could result in a high cost of seeds fixed arbitrarily by the seed companies, as the case of transgenic Bt. cotton. Moreover there is also no provision on the limit of profit, which a seed company can make from a given brand. Recently the Government of Andhra Pradesh has taken the international seed giant, Monsanto to the Monopoly and Restrictive Trade Practices (MRTP) Commission for charging license fee of Rs. 1250/ per packet out of an MRP of Rs 1650 to Rs. 1850/- on 450 grams of Bt. cotton seeds[vi]. The absence of effective price control safeguards indicate that the government does not want to regulate seed prices and abdicated its responsibility to ensure adequate seed supply at reasonable price to farmers.

The draft legislation is also silent on the origin and ownership of the seeds and denies Indian farmers their due rights over their seeds. Even in the PVPFR Act 2001, there is a provision to disclose the ownership of the seeds under protection but the draft seeds legislation does not require disclosure of parentage of seed varieties during registration, thus facilitating unrestricted commercialization of seeds in the public domain. It means that the seed companies could use farmers' varieties without giving any credit to them and farmers may end up paying hundreds of times the cost of a "registered" seed, which could have been bred from their own traditional varieties. We had witnessed how Syngenta tried to steal and monopolize more than 23,000 varieties of paddy seeds collection from Chattisgarh through signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Agricultural University in Raipur in Chattisgarh[vii]. Moreover, the Seeds Bill has no provision for helping Indian farmers in innovating, evolving and commercializing their varieties. On the contrary, the Bill tries to wipe out the very existence of farmers varieties and their innovation.

Last but not the least, the proposed seeds legislation ensures fast track clearance of GM seeds and crops thus bypassing the well established system of biosafety clearance through the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), Ministry of Environment and Forests set up under the GMOs Rules 1989. The Bill advocates for grant of provisional permission to GM seeds and varieties thus violating the biosafety norms for monitoring and regulation of GM products under the GMOs Rules of 1989. This also indicates an active involvement of Monsanto’s in pushing this Bill so that they can bypass GEAC in commercializing their GM seeds.

Based on the above, it is imperative for us to demand the withdrawal of the Seeds Bill 2004, which does not have any component to protect Indian farmers from the onslaught of the seed MNCs, and makes the farmers completely dependent over the seeds companies for seed supply.

Moreover, instead of legislating this pro seeds company bill, we should demand the UPA government to strengthen the Seeds Bill 1966 in order to regulate the national and international seed companies and protect the interest of farmers and their rights over seeds. An agriculture dominated country like India requires a Seeds Act which is strong, transparent and unambiguous in regulating the seed trade and makes the providers of seed accountable. The speed with which the traditional seeds are already being replaced with the MNCs seeds, the day is not far when Indian farmers will be forced to become completely dependent for seed supply from MNCs like Monsanto who are monopolizing the seed business by mergers and acquisition of Indian seed companies.

The coming Winter Parliamentary session will be crucial in deciding the fate of the Indian, “free seeds” or “controlled seeds”. According to the sources in the Agriculture Committee, all the anti farmers provisions have been removed but to say anything now would be premature unless the fresh bill or amended bill, based on the report of the Committee is tabled in the house. But given the close proximity between Manmohan Singh’s Government and the Bush Administration, all efforts will be made to have minimum dilution in the original bill to favour Monsanto and other big seeds companies.

Monsanto will also ensure that the original bill, with minor amendments, gets through the Parliament without much debate and discussion as has happened in the last Parliamentary session, on 26^th July, when the Food Safety and Standards Bill, 2005, inspite of its far reaching implications for livelihoods of farmers. The Bill that compromises Indian food culture, food safety and food security, got easily cleared in the Lok Sabha with bare minimum presence of members in the Lower House.

Members of Parliament need to be vigilant to see that the pro-farmers suggestions of the Committee are fully incorporated in the new proposed legislation. The Indian farmers unions, activists and concerned citizens need to act as watch and ward to monitor every development on the seeds bill inside the Parliament and outside.

Monsanto’s objective is to hijack India’s seed supply and undermine India’s seed sovereignty and this should not happen. If we lose control over our seed, we lose our freedom. This would be disastrous for the seed security, food security and freedom of farmers in India.

Afsar Jafri is a research associate with Focus on the Global South, based in Mumbai. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it .