So said the BJP government's industries minister, Sikandar Bakht, in a seminar recently held at New Delhi on intellectual property issues in the next millennium.

This is at a time when the United Nations convention on bio-diversity, in its Montreal meeting in the last week of June, has decided to give a new lease of life to terminator seeds, giving the multinationals like Monsanto a free run.

As we know, in the Uruguay round of discussions, a handful of countries exporting agricultural commodities, led by the US, had come to an agreement called Agreement on Agriculture (AOA).

There are three direct provisions relating to agriculture in the above agreement. These are reduction in trade barriers, increased market access, and reduction in aggregate measure of support. The first two are interrelated. The indirect provisions of the AOA relate to intellectual property rights, to patenting of seeds in particular.

Experience has proved that the AOA has helped only a small number of countries. The latest survey about this agreement shows that five main exporting countries including the US are able to channelise about 40 million tonnes of subsidised wheat into the world market; this roughly amounts to 40 per cent of wheat trade. The corresponding figure for coarse cereals is 22 per cent and for poultry, 25 per cent.

In fact, experience of the last six years after Marakkash Treaty in 1994, and of the implementation of AOA, has proved that the developing countries were affected in two ways -- they neither got the desirable share in the world market nor were able to protect their own markets from the onslaught of subsidised products coming from the developed countries.

Who was to benefit from the Agreement on Agriculture could be very well seen from the statement of Monsanto representative immediately after the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement was signed. He stated: "We were the physician, the diagnostician, the patient -- all in one."

What effect the globalisation of agriculture has exerted on India can be very well seen from the tragedy of farmers who committed suicide in many states. Reports show that more than 300 cotton farmers committed suicide in Andhra Pradesh alone in 1997-98; the tally is more than 500 on an all-India plane.

Recent surveys in these states clearly show that most of the farmers had spent Rs 12,000 to 15,000 per acre on pesticides alone; this consisted nearly 70 per cent of total investment. The surveys reveal that the peasants were heavily indebted by purchasing seeds and pesticides from MNCs as they had to contract loans at interest rates of 36 to 48 per cent.

In this background the decision of the United Nations convention on biodiversity, giving a new lease of life to the terminator seeds, looks more dangerous, especially when there is a review meeting of AOA due by 2000 AD. In fact, if accepted, the terminator technology will put the multinationals in full control of not only the seeds industry but of entire agriculture.

It seems multinationals like the Monsanto have already started their offensive to influence the decisions of the proposed review meeting in 2000, in order to squeeze the third world countries further.

All this will only adversely affect the interests of the peasants, more than 70 per cent among whom are small and marginal farmers who are also the major seed producers. However, in this situation, instead of concentrating on protecting the interest of the peasants as producers as well as consumers of seeds, the BJP government has caused them much harm by amending the patent act of 1970.

Now that the multinationals are on their move towards commercialisation of sterile seeds technology, the move of the BJP government's industries minister about accelerating the process of "reforms" in all areas of intellectual property, has to be fought tooth and nail and defeated at all cost.

In a situation where the government of India should have taken initiative to mobilise all the third world countries to fight against the designs of the MNCs in the review meeting due next year, statements showing further surrender by the BJP government only exposes its true colour.

We cannot expect otherwise from a party like the BJP. In 1995 when the then Narasimha Rao government had brought a patent law amendment act, the BJP, it will be recalled, had openly declared that "Passing an amendment to patent act amounts to inviting Robert Clive again to India." But, after coming to power, the government led by the same BJP shamelessly passed the same patent amendment act without even a change in words.

It is time for the peasants and other democratic sections of our society to unitedly fight the latest designs of the MNCs to commercialise the sterile seed technology. This is what is absolutely essential to protect the interests of Indian peasantry and agriculture.