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The Seeds Bill 2019, likely to be tabled in the ongoing winter session of Parliament, may further increase problems for farmers, say experts who have gone through the provisions of the proposed legislation.
Currently, the sale and distribution of seeds in India is regulated by the Seeds Act 1966 ensuring better quality of seeds are used by cultivators.
In the last one decade there have been two attempts, when the UPA government was in power, once in 2004 and second time in 2010, to introduce amendments to the 1966 law.
In October 2019, the NDA government put out the draft of the new Seeds Bill 2019 seeking suggestions from experts.
One of the contentious clauses in the proposed Bill is that of compensation in case the farmer suffers a loss due to poor quality of seeds.
Clause 21 of the Seeds Bill 2019 states:
The fact that a farmer will have to approach a court which will require him to follow-up with the case for years, is something, that the activists are not comfortable with.
Speaking to The Quint, Bengaluru-based activist Kavitha Kuruganti says:
There is no provision of any compensation under the current law and hence the proposed Bill should have been considered as an improvement.
But activists feel that it’s the state government which should step in and set up block-level or taluka-level committees to address issues around compensation in case of crop failure.
The apprehensions regarding litigation are not entirely unfounded. According to a news report, as of September 2018, a total of 3,32,462 complaints were pending at district consumer courts while 20,240 cases were pending at the National Commission.
Another concern regarding the Seeds Bill is that of price control. While the new Bill has provisions for state-level committees monitoring the quality of seeds, farmer leaders feel that government intervention is needed to offset the high price claimed by private players in the seed industry.
According to KV Biju, national coordinator of the Rashtriya Kisan Mahasangh, the experience with Bt cotton seeds has not been so good and thus, measures to regulate price should have been included in the proposed law.
For instance, Maharashtra has its own Cotton Seed Act 2009 that caps the price of cotton seeds across the state.
For crops other than cotton, farmers can take recourse to consumer courts in case a particular brand of seed fails to deliver.
There is almost no mention of crop diversification in the Bill which might help farmers in choosing alternatives other than the traditional crops.
One of the criticisms against India’s green revolution has been that it compelled farmers to rely on same variety of seeds which was in demand and assured profits. The Seed Bill is silent on the issue of crop variety.
‘The Seed Bill by itself may not do much to provide greater diversity for the end consumer’, says Kavitha Kuruganti emphasising on the need to overhaul the cropping patterns adopted in India especially after the green revolution.
The farmer leaders are already up in arms against the government demanding revamp of crop compensation scheme and have called for a nation-wide ‘Grameen Bandh’ on 8 January 2020. With the slowdown taking a toll on rural economy, it’s feared that the Seed Bill could further add to the woes of farmers.
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