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Indian farmers at the receiving end

Kashmir Times. Dated: 3/23/2017 10:24:36 PM

Dear Editor,
After the adopting of the doctrine of “Globalisation” & “Economic Reforms” in early nineties by the govt. of India at the behest of the World Trade organization (WTO) floated by US and other developed countries of world, the common masses in urban and rural areas of developing and under developed countries have been put to multiple types of miseries and hardships by way of retrenchment of employees and workers of public sector enmass, private public partnership (PPP), curbing small businesses by way of inviting MNCs and Foreigner investors to invest in retail sector, defence, media and other sectors in a big way, forcing the agriculturists to abandon their fertile lands for creating special Economic Zones (SEZs), big factories and industries there.
The farmers who used to feed the nation by sowing local seeds in their fields for growing wheat, rice, serials etc were being forced to abandon their local seeds and buy their GM seeds for growing the crops. The industrial agriculture dominated by a small number of transnational corporations has encroached rapidly the land that the peasants rely on to produce food and on peasants, access to the diversity of seeds which forms the basis of peasant farming and agro forestry systems as they used to save, exchange and replant seeds year after year and this practice has created enormous agro biodiversity that the world now have.
This has always been thorn in the side of corporate seed barons that are set on controlling the global seed market as they wanted the farmers to buy their seed every year and are continuously pushing the governments to adopt even more stringent laws & treaties to push the farmers into the corporate seed market. These seed industries intend to claim ownership rights over the seeds they develop and the genetic materials they contain thus preventing farmers to do away with what they have been doing for generations of save, exchange and improve seed in their own indigenous manner.
There are, however, reportedly some efforts at the UN level to protect the rights of the farmers and local communities over the biodiversity that they have nurtured over centuries & a seed treaty was negotiated & agreed some 15 years back at the Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the UN which includes a clause on farmers rights that recognize their rights to save, use, exchange & sell farm saved seeds whileas also recognizing corporate intellectual property rights on seeds which may go against the genuine needs and aspiration of agriculture farmers most of whom are poor having very small land holdings.
—Krishan Singh,
Talab Tillo, Jammu.