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With the USPTO (US
Patent and Trademark Organisation) upholding the Texas based Rice Tec’s patent
application for basmati, India’s genetic wealth is once again being hijacked by
the TNCs. What process began with the so-called green revolution in the
1970s is now being taken to its extreme in the name of globalisation. All
India’s vast genetic wealth is under severe threat.............. it was first
neem, haldi, now it is basmati, amla and a host of other genetic products.
India’s animal and vegetable life is a very rich source of genetic wealth built
up over centuries which is being systemically usurped by the TNCs.
The Indian government
and some NGOs have tried to create a lot of confusion around this latest
judgement, claiming some quixotic victory. They are like the monkey that lost
its tail, and began preaching that all monkeys should do away with their tails.
What then is the
actual nature of the judgement? In the present judgement, though basmati cannot
be used as a brand name, Rice Tec can market its rice under its own brand names
(e.g. Texmati) and state on the package that it is ‘superior to basmati’.
In addition, Rice Tec, which had earlier (1997) got permission for 20 rice
varieties, has now been granted the right for five. Both these points are
claimed as some kind of victory for India. That is totally false. Firstly,
basmati is like a generic name for the rice, so there was no question of getting
a right to use it as a brand name. Brand names are many, even in India; but all
add basmati on the packet. This right has now been granted to Rice Tec. Besides
whether it is 20 rice lines or 5, makes very little difference in its ability to
swamp markets in the US. More important, it opens up the door for Rice Tec to
replace Indian imports to the US with their variety of ‘basmati’ rice.
Yet, this too is not
the basic question.
The key question is
whether ‘rice lines’ derived from varieties traditionally developed by
cultivators in specific geographic areas, should at all be patentable. In fact,
it is commercial plant breeders like Rice Tec who build on traditional knowledge
without paying for it. It is like a factory getting its raw material free of
cost. Rice Tec then develops a product, which is supposedly new and so valid for
a patent, which is unavailable to the original source product. There is no
suggestion of even sharing the royalty, though the original strain has been
hijacked by the American Company. With this victory the US can challenge Indian
Basmati throughout the world as it can file for similar rights wherever there is
a large market for basmati. There have, in fact, been precedents for this. For
example, a Kerala-based company sold a product derived from pepper. A US firm,
Sabinsca Corporation, which has a patent on pepper products, recently served a
notice on the Indian Company seeking to restrain its sales.
In fact, the real
defeat did not come merely with this judgement, but much earlier. On May 15 of
this year the US Federal Trade Commission (FTO) denied a petition by three NGOs
that had demanded geographic-based protection, as has been granted to champagne.
The Commission ruled that basmati was not specific to a region. In other words,
as long as the company grew rice that fulfilled the definition provided by the
US department of Agriculture, it could label that rice as basmati, irrespective
of whether the rice fields are in India or in Thailand or Texas or anywhere in
the world.
In this entire
process of protecting India’s genetic rights the Indian government has taken a
most negligent attitude leaving much of the battle to be fought by NGOs and
exporters. This is not surprising, as right from the times of the green
revolution the Indian rulers and its bureaucracy have been the main tools
through which the country has been looted of its gene wealth. In fact, India’s
top-most agricultural institution, the ICAR (Indian Council of Agricultural
Research) and also some agricultural universities, has, for the last four
decades, acted as the main vehicle of US agribusiness in this country. These
agents, together with American plant breeders were treated as VIPs, who would
traverse the length and breadth of this vast land without any restriction
whatsoever, usurping the thousands of Indian varieties, and developing them into
money-spinners for the US seed companies. Their Indian collaborators would, no
doubt, get some crumbs. Besides, a vast network of internationally funded
institutions, like the IRRI (International Rice Research Institute), the CIMMYT
(International Maize and Wheat Research Institute), the IITA (International
Institute of Tropical Agriculture), etc., had a nest of ‘Indian’ scientists on
Washington’s payroll.
Without such
collaborators, built up over decades, it would never have been possible for the
present basmati fiasco to have occurred. It has been reported by the Gene
Campaign in 1996 that, through this gene robbery the American TNCs gave gained a
gigantic $70 billion over the years. With the present WTO patent regime in
place, this loot is bound to increase ten-fold. The recent Farm Breeders Bill,
passed by parliament as part of the new WTO regime, is nothing but a means of
enhancing the loot of our peasantry by US agribusiness. The USPTO basmati patent
and the ‘Indian’ Farm Breeders Bill are but two side of the same coin. The fight
against Monsanto, Rice Tec, and US Agribusiness, is inconceivable without
simultaneously smashing their collaborators within our country.
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