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. . . . On 18 May, the agriculture ministry brought out an order prescribing guidelines for licensing GM traits in India.
The order makes it mandatory for the GM trait developer to license the traits to any seed company . . . [and] mandatory for the seed company to pay the trait license fee. The order also prescribes a 10-year life for every GM trait and fixes the maximum royalty at 10 per cent of the MRP. . . .
. . . the order was later withdrawn and put for public comments . . . Still, it shows us the direction in which the Government is thinking . . .
. . . this order is a regressive step. It will not serve the interests of the Indian seed industry, the biotech industry or farmers. . . .
. . . .
It takes more than 10 years and hundreds of crores of rupees of investment to bring one new biotech trait to the market. . . .
It is impossible for any technology developer to recover his investments under these conditions. This will compromise the interests of the farmers as new vital traits . . . will find it very difficult to get commercialised.
Read full, original post: Sowing the seeds of a crisis
