Indian FTAs may hit SE Asian ryots
DNA, India
Indian FTAs may hit SE Asian ryots
By Priyanka Golikeri / DNA
23 February 2010
Mumbai: While India mulls another free trade agreement (FTA) with Australia and New Zealand, its FTAs with European Union and Japan remains shrouded in uncertainty with its decisions regarding intellectual property (IP) rights likely to impact not just India, but other developing South East Asian countries as well.
According to people closely tracking the FTAs, there is strong pressure on India to join the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) -1991, which would make Indian farmers pawns of multinational companies engaged in crop research.
Joining UPOV-1991 would crush farmers’ privileges to share,
exchange, and sell plant variety protection (PVP) seeds to other farmers.
PVP guarantees IP protection to plant varieties developed by
agricultural multinationals. The objective of UPOV is to protect new varieties of plants by IP. Harmonisation of PVP across the Asia
Pacific region is the aim of developed economies through FTAs, say experts.
UPOV-91 would also imply that farmers will be able to sow PVP seeds only in their own field, and saving seeds for future use would require permission and subsequent royalty payment to the agriculture corporates, or attract penalty.
India joining UPOV-91 could produce a ripple effect in other developing countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia to join the same, says Shalini Bhutani, regional programme officer Asia, GRAIN, a non profit organisation supporting small farmers. “UPOV -1991 would imply signing away seed and food sovereignty,” she says.
“If India accedes to UPOV-91, pressure on smaller countries to follow suit will increase tremendously,” says Bhaskar Goswami, forum for biotechnology and food security, adding that smaller countries in Southeast Asia don’t have much voice in the political arena and generally tend to follow bigger developing countries such as India.
EU, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand are keen that India accepts UPOV-91, says Delhi-based food and trade policy analyst Devinder Sharma.
“Farmers will lose control over seeds, which means they would ideally lose control over agriculture and come under dominance of crop breeders.”
Experts also say that UPOV -91 goes beyond the requirements by the trade related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS) agreement of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which India is signatory to.
Goswami says that while laws under TRIPS are draconian, those being institutionalised through FTAs are nothing short of undermining whatever little protection farmers have in developing countries.
