Sowing dissent

Centre should win States' confidence on Seeds Bill

With Parliament hardly able to conduct any legislative business, the campaign against the latest draft of the Seed Bill 2010, spearheaded by Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar and backed by several farmers’ organisations and major opposition parties, will not be the only reason for a further delay in the bill’s approval by parliament. The Bill was drafted after a prolonged process of consultation involving all stakeholders and members of the parliamentary standing committee. Its purpose is to regulate the quality, production, distribution, import and export of seeds, besides promoting private participation in the seed sector. It also creates a legal framework for the production and distribution of genetically-modified (GM) seeds, ending the current practice of introducing them merely after getting the approval of the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) and the environment ministry. This would enable registration of GM seeds, like seeds of any other crop variety or hybrid and subject to stipulated regulations. The existing Seed Act, 1966, which the new legislation seeks to replace, does not cover GM seeds. While the proposed legislation seeks to reform an out-dated Act, its detractors remain unconvinced. The major grouse of Mr Nitish Kumar, which is shared by several other chief ministers, is that this legislation steps into the Constitutional domain of states, since agriculture is a state subject under the Constitution. As such, it takes away the right of the states to decide which seeds to be allowed for cultivation and fix the prices and royalties concerning them. Further, they fear that encouraging private sector participation in the seed sector would put farmers at the mercy of the big agribusiness (read multinational seed giants). On GM seeds, the chief ministers feel that the draft Bill does not lay down adequate safeguards.

While, on balance, these chief ministers are not being fair in raising the objections they do, the fact is that in a federal system, the Centre must win the confidence of states, especially when different political parties are in power in different states and the Centre. Since the move to amend the seed law was initiated way back in 2004, the Centre had enough time to engage the states and draft a bill based on a wider consensus. Interestingly, many of the proposed provisions in this law are already there in the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act, 2001, which has very rightly been hailed by one and all as the most appropriate sui generis statute on crop seeds under the trade-related intellectual property rights (TRIPs) regime of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). This law adequately protects the traditional rights of farmers who use self-grown seeds of even the patent-protected varieties and also exchanging them amongst themselves or selling them to others, but without branding them. The new draft of the seed Bill, therefore, can be revisited to avoid duplications and address the concerns expressed by the critics, without sacrificing some of the good clauses of the current Bill. A pro-active approach by the Centre to build wider consensus should be able to win over reasonable chief ministers like Mr Kumar.