THE GOVERNMENT CLAIMS THE BILL SEEKS TO:

HOW THE BILL UNDERMINES FARMERS' RIGHTS AND NATIONAL INTERESTS: 

Give effect to Article 27.3(b)  of Part II of the TRIPs Agreement of WTO [Statement of Objects and Reasons, page 32,33 of Bill]

This Article of TRIPs is under review and is already being challenged by India in the WTO and the Organisation of African Unity and the Central American countries. These reviews are calling for fundamental changes in Article 27.3(b) and a five year extension in implementation of TRIPs. [Review submissions to WTO TRIPs Council] Given the ongoing review aimed at changing TRIPs there is no justification to rush to implement the TRIPs Articles undergoing change.

Give an effective system for protection of the rights of farmers [Clause 31]

The Bill openly promotes piracy of farmers' varieties such as Basmati, by failure to register and protect farmers' varieties, which account for 80% of the seed used in the country. (Clauses 11 & 12) 

Failure to recognise farmers as breeders whose collective and cumulative innovation through time has built the crop diversity that is the basis of food security and further breeding.  [Clause 2(j)] 

Clause 31 referring to "farmers' rights" is not a farmers' rights clause, since farmers' rights in IPRs laws are rights as breeders. The Clause merely refers to farmers as cultivators with a right to cultivate and sell farm produce, not to farmers as innovators or to farmers' inalienable right to save, produce and freely exchange seeds and propagative material. 

Failure to grant protection to farmers breeding and farmers innovation in the form of community rights, which is the basis of sui generis laws being drafted around the world. 
 

Give an effective system for protection of the rights of plant breeders [Clause 2]

Exaggerates the rights of breeders (MNCs) to cover "discovery" of plant varieties which amounts to license to pirate indigenous varieties. No where in the world has discovery of varieties been the basis of granting IPRs. 

Provide for rights of the village or farming community [Clause 48]

The clause is not about the rights of communities to their inalienable right to use, save, breed and exchange varieties and nor about the protection of the community rights to collective innovation embodied in farmers' varieties. 

The Clause assumes the rights will only belong to breeders (MNCs).The original innovators, India's farming communities, will not have rights but might have a small chance of a small compensation through a highly bureaucratised and arbitrary system spanning form local officials to national Authorities through all the hierarchies of corruption and bureaucratic decision-making. 

The fundamental rights of farmers and farming communities and India as a nation to her collective intellectual and biological heritage are not being protected in this Bill. On the other hand cases where piracy occurs are being reduced to local conflicts in which the local bureaucracy (District Magistrate) is the ultimate arbitor. [Clause 26(7)] 

Clause 48 makes it very clear that the rights of communities as innovators will not be recognised since the arbitrarily fixed compensation as the bureaucracy "deems fit" will be deemed to be an arrear of land revenue [Clause 48(5)] not a royalty paid to farming communities as breeders by commercial entities. This is a clear evidence of a strategy to deny the intellectual contribution of our farmers through thousands of years and negate the "prior art" embodied in farmers' varieties to give far reaching monopoly rights to seed corporations. 
 

Encourage the development of new varieties of plants [Statement of Objects and Reasons] 

The Bill will encourage the pirating and monopolising of indigenous farmers' varieties, and will increase the financial burden on farmers who are already indebted and committing suicides due to spread of costly and unreliable seeds.