ABSTRACT
In 2004, the Government of India circulated a bill that would revise and replace many of the policies governing seeds and seed saving in India. Prior to this, legislation had increasingly liberalized India’s trade laws, but policies regarding the saving of seeds had not changed much since the 1966 Seed Act. The 2004 National Seed Policy would require the registration of all seeds, domestic and foreign, with the government before they could be sold. The bill would also make it easier for foreign direct investment in India’s seed market, largely through the genetically modified (GM) trait market. Resistance to multiple aspects of the bill has kept it from being passed, but the bill sparked debates over what the introduction of transnational capital and GM seeds will mean for India’s agrarian future. Since the Green Revolution, public-private partnerships have developed so-called “improved varieties” from indigenous seed varieties which were then sold back to farmers. The 2004 Seed Policy would effectively end any autonomous seed saving that had any commercial sales associated with them, significantly reshaping marketing strategies for small-scale producers. Kloppenburg (2010) argues that the right to control genetic resources is a key component of food sovereignty. The debate over who controls genomic material signals a broader struggle over the right to food and the future of agriculture.
