Hundreds of thousands of farmers across India protested against the new draft Seed Bill 2025 on Monday, December 8, burning copies of it and demanding its immediate withdrawal. The bill will compromise the country’s food security and threaten its seed sovereignty, the farmers claimed.

The call for the protest was made by Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM), a collective of various farmers’ organizations formed in 2020, which includes the left-wing All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS).

Farmers gathered in their villages/towns with banners and posters and burnt copies of the seed bill. In some places, farmers also burned copies of an electricity bill calling for its withdrawal, which has been a part of the farmers’ agitation for years now.

The seed bill was announced by India’s Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare (MoAFW) on November 12, with a deadline for public comments set for December 11. The proposed bill, if passed in the parliament, will replace the existing seeds act of 1966.

The ultra-right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government, which has unleashed a series of legislation angering both the workers and farmers in the country recently, claims that the seed bill seeks to modernize seed regulations with stricter quality control and penalties for major offenses.

In a statement issued on Sunday, SKM questioned the government’s claims, calling the proposed bill a “regressive legislation” which will establish the hegemony of Multinational Corporations (MNCs) over the Indian seed sector and take away the country’s seed sovereignty.

The bill is harmful for the farmers, for India’s biodiversity, and its food security, and also an assault on Indian federal structure, as it proposes the centralization of the existing powers of the provincial/state governments, SKM claimed.

Almost half of India’s workforce is engaged in agriculture with the majority of them involved in sustenance farming. As of now, most of them source seeds from their personal storage or local links. A large section of the seed needs are also supplied by the public sector or local companies.

Bill will consolidate corporate control

The proposed bill will establish MNC control over the supply of seeds, ending the existing arrangement, which provides greater flexibility to the farmers to source the required seeds from local or public sectors.

The control of MNCs will endanger indigenous varieties, public institutions, and traditional/informal seed networks and “bring disaster for sustenance farming in India,” claims SKM in a statement.

The bill will leave the crop cycle in India at the mercy of the MNCs.

“There is no mention [in the bill] of guaranteeing the timely supply of cheap and quality seeds in the market to ensure food security and profitable farming” which should have been the main concern of the government, SKM claims.

SKM also fears that the draft seed bill will empower the MNCs so much that it will be very difficult to monitor and control their future untoward behavior as well. This may endanger India’s biodiversity and the country’s rights over its genetic resources.

In its presented form, SKM alleged, the seeds bill is an attempt to bring back the provisions of the Contract Farming Act, which the government was forced to withdraw in 2021 after a year-long farmer’s protest in and around the capital Delhi.

On November 26, farmers observed the fifth anniversary of the 2020/21 agitation by holding nationwide protests. Farmers claim that most of the promises made by the government in the agreement signed with the SKM at the time, including the legal guaranteed price for agricultural products, remain unfulfilled even after five years.

Federal structure in India undermined

The seed bill limits the powers of the state/provincial governments to regulate and control the MNCs if they violate certain laws, while local and public sector suppliers remain under strong regulatory control.

It allows the MNCs to self-validate the varieties of seeds they are supplying in the country without any local control.

“The draft bill introduces a heavily centralized and corporatized regulatory system that risks weakening farmer-centered protections and diluting India’s legal architecture for biodiversity conservation and farmers’ rights,” SKM claims.

This may put local suppliers at a disadvantage and compromise the country’s seed sovereignty, given the resources which MNCs have vis-a-vis local and public sector seed suppliers.

“There is no provision of any trial of imported seeds under the supervision of Indian authorities”, which exposes the “government’s subservience to foreign masters in handing over the sensitive seed sector to MNCs,” SKM underlines.

The ruling BJP “is betraying the interests of the people and the country at large by introducing the anti-farmer draft seed bill 2025,” SKM accused.

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