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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Nitish flays Seeds Bill as anti-farmer

-The Times of India
 
Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar today flayed the proposed Seeds Bill, 2011, saying that its provisions were tilted heavily in favour of the multi-national companies and against the interests of the farmers. 

"There is no guarantee in the proposed Seeds Bill, 2011, that the seeds produced and marketed by the MNCs will be beneficial to the farmers," Kumar said at a function organized to celebrate the 123rd birth anniversary of the Swami Shahjanand. There were also no provision in the proposed seeds bill for compensation by the central government or the MNCs to the farmers in the event of loss of crop due to poor quality of seeds, Kumar said. Demanding that the Centre should bring in provisions in the proposed Seeds Bill, 2011, mandating the MNCs to compensate the farmers for their crop loss on account of seeds, the chief minister urged the parliamentarians not to pass the bill in its present form. 

Stating that the MNCs producing and marketing farm seeds should not be trusted about their quality on face value, Kumar said there was an instance in Bihar last year when the farmers suffered losses in cultivation of maize by using seeds of the MNCs as those did not flower at all. 

Since there was no legislation to mandate the MNCs to compensate the farmers for the crop loss, the state government had to pay Rs 61,000 crore as compensation to the farmers at the rate of Rs 10,000 per acre, he said.