The farming communities across the world have been following, since time immemorial, the practice of sharing of knowledge and resources. Sharing of seeds among farmers, for example, constitutes perhaps the most important part in these traditional agricultural practices. But unfortunately the developers of this wealth remained invisible in trade and commerce and their resources have been utilized by Private Agrarian Sector. They were not either consulted or benefited or not even informed while detraction of their centuries worth toil and results. With the advent of Intellectual Property Regime, ownership rights vested with the Multi-national Companies (MNCs). They deliberately used the resources of poor and uneducated farmers of developing nations for their monetary gain.
India’s policy on Plant Variety Protection witnessed major changes by adoption of New Seed Policy of 1988 to allow large Indian and multinational (MNC) companies to invest in the production of hybrid seeds and agricultural biotechnology. This allowed import of seeds and collaboration in agriculture research with foreign companies. Thus subsidiaries of foreign multinationals found a strong root in India and formed Seed Association of India (SAI) by 1985.
A conference conducted by SAI became a breakthrough framing legislation for protection of plant varieties. Several NGO’s and farmer groups voiced against sole grant of rights to breeders and demanded to consider the agriculture environment as a special case and utilize the flexibility
provided by TRIPs. The first draft of the Bill was formulated in 1993/94 that received wide criticism for conforming to UPOV by granting rights to plant breeders. The first bill provided consideration to public sector by allowing rights over extant variety by registration. This draft contained clauses on community rights to benefits out of use of their genetic material and farmers rights to save, use, exchange, share and sell propagating material of seed except sale of branded seed. But there was no concept of farmer’s ownership rights through registration. Considering strong protest, the Ministry of Agriculture prepared second draft in 1996 and a third one in 1997. The third draft contained Farmers Rights in the title but it was again criticized by NGOs pointing that benefit sharing was vague under the bill, there were no farmer’s representatives in the Authority, and there was no system for registering farmer’s varieties. The fourth draft was introduced in Parliament in 1999 which was sent to a Joint Parliamentary Committee to redraft the bill considering opinions of NGOs, industry, scientists and farmers. The final version of the bill was introduced in 2001 and became law. The Act found new chapter on registration of farmers‟ varieties and detailed provision on farmers rights.
India is one of the few countries having specific legal provisions addressing farmer’s rights. The concept of farmers rights has become an explicit part of Indian legal system through the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers Rights Act, 2001.
