Published February 26th, 2010
In the News: Indian FTAs may hit SE Asian ryots
Mumbai: While India mulls another free trade agreement (FTA) with Australia and New Zealand, its FTAs with European Union and Japan remains shrouded in uncertainty with its decisions regarding intellectual property (IP) rights likely to impact not just India, but other developing South East Asian countries as well.
According to people closely tracking the FTAs, there is strong pressure on India to join the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) -1991, which would make Indian farmers pawns of multinational companies engaged in crop research.
Joining UPOV-1991 would crush farmers’ privileges to share,
exchange, and sell plant variety protection (PVP) seeds to other farmers.
PVP guarantees IP protection to plant varieties developed by
agricultural multinationals. The objective of UPOV is to protect new varieties of plants by IP. Harmonisation of PVP across the Asia
Pacific region is the aim of developed economies through FTAs, say experts.


