Bio-piracy: Govt of India doesn't support litigations; 'it would affect foreign investment'

By Rajiv Shah
A just-published study has revealed the Government of India (GoI) has not been supporting litigations arising from violating National Biological Diversity (DB) Act, 2002, pointing towards how the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA), the country’s watchdog for implementing the Act, has been at the “receiving end” for most of the litigations.
A statutory autonomous body, NBA functions under the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, GoI, and was established in 2003 to comply by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which India signed in 1992.
Insisting that refusal to support legal cases can itself be “very resource draining”, the study, “Litigating India’s Biological Diversity Act: A Study of Legal Cases”, says, “Legal capacity to deal with cases is also quite limited in the bodies set up under the Act”, adding, the GoI “does not undertake the litigation work of the Authority.”
The result is that, according to the study, undertaken by researchers, Shalini Bhutani and Kanchi Kohli, the NBA has to rely on “external lawyers for that purpose.” Worse, it adds, “There are sometimes law internships/placement notes that are put up by law professors before the NBA for its members to consider.”
Suggesting that the situation is not very different with the 28 state-level authorities (state biodiversity boards or SBBs) set up by the NBA, the study says, they miserably lack “litigation expertise”, at a time when “big and powerful companies come with their strong team of equally influential lawyers.”
In fact, the study says, there is an “express prohibition under the Act against foreign nationals taking any bioresources without due permission of the NBA” in the absence of NBA approval, and any violation may attract “penalty of either a jail term extendable to five years or with fine that extends to Rs 10 lakh.”
Yet, the study regrets, “Though forest officials usually man the SBBs, it’s not very often that the BD Act is used by field-level forest officers to deal with smuggling of bioresources, such as exotic wild species.” It adds, this is because the Act has not been “properly known and understood” and is therefore “rarely invoked”.
The study says, the Act and its rules allow the NBA can take up “necessary measures including appointment of legal experts to oppose grant of intellectual property right in any country outside India on any biological resource and associated knowledge obtained from India in an illegal manner.”
Yet, it underlines, the NBA has neither ever invoked this provision of the Act, nor its requisite rule, noting that it “still a lack of a legal/monitoring cell to keep track of and contest IPRs given outside the country, based on biological resources (or associated traditional knowledge) derived from India.”
This is because, according to the study, in cases of ‘biopiracy’ involving a foreign national or a company registered in India but with foreign shareholding, the GoI “does not want to appear unduly strict on this matter, as the apprehension is that it will be a disincentive to foreign investors.”

The study, funded Foundation for Ecological Security (FES), Anand, Gujarat, with research carried out in collaboration with Kalpavriksh Environmental Action Group, analyses 50 cases with respect to provisions of the BD Act or its rules/ guidelines between 2004 and 2016.

Comments

Plastic burning in homes threatens food, water and air across Global South: Study

By Jag Jivan In a groundbreaking study spanning 26 countries across the Global South , researchers have uncovered the widespread and concerning practice of households burning plastic waste as a fuel for cooking, heating, and other domestic needs. The research, published in Nature Communications , reveals that this hazardous method of managing both waste and energy poverty is driven by systemic failures in municipal services and the unaffordability of clean alternatives, posing severe risks to human health and the environment.

Economic superpower’s social failure? Inequality, malnutrition and crisis of India's democracy

By Vikas Meshram India may be celebrated as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, but a closer look at who benefits from that growth tells a starkly different story. The recently released World Inequality Report 2026 lays bare a country sharply divided by wealth, privilege and power. According to the report, nearly 65 percent of India’s total wealth is owned by the richest 10 percent of its population, while the bottom half of the country controls barely 6.4 percent. The top one percent—around 14 million people—holds more than 40 percent, the highest concentration since 1961. Meanwhile, the female labour force participation rate is a dismal 15.7 percent.

From colonial mercantilism to Hindutva: New book on the making of power in Gujarat

By Rajiv Shah Professor Ghanshyam Shah ’s latest book, “ Caste-Class Hegemony and State Power: A Study of Gujarat Politics ”, published by Routledge , is penned by one of Gujarat ’s most respected chroniclers, drawing on decades of fieldwork in the state. It seeks to dissect how caste and class factors overlap to perpetuate the hegemony of upper strata in an ostensibly democratic polity. The book probes the dominance of two main political parties in Gujarat—the Indian National Congress and the BJP—arguing that both have sustained capitalist growth while reinforcing Brahmanic hierarchies.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

The greatest threat to our food system: The aggressive push for GM crops

By Bharat Dogra Thanks to the courageous resistance of several leading scientists who continue to speak the truth despite increasing pressures from the powerful GM crop and GM food lobby , the many-sided and in some contexts irreversible environmental and health impacts of GM foods and crops, as well as the highly disruptive effects of this technology on farmers, are widely known today.

History, culture and literature of Fatehpur, UP, from where Maulana Hasrat Mohani hailed

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* Maulana Hasrat Mohani was a member of the Constituent Assembly and an extremely important leader of our freedom movement. Born in Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh, Hasrat Mohani's relationship with nearby district of Fatehpur is interesting and not explored much by biographers and historians. Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri has written a book on Maulana Hasrat Mohani and Fatehpur. The book is in Urdu. He has just come out with another important book, 'Hindi kee Pratham Rachna: Chandayan' authored by Mulla Daud Dalmai.' During my recent visit to Fatehpur town, I had an opportunity to meet Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri and recorded a conversation with him on issues of history, culture and literature of Fatehpur. Sharing this conversation here with you. Kindly click this link. --- *Human rights defender. Facebook https://www.facebook.com/vbrawat , X @freetohumanity, Skype @vbrawat

UP tribal woman human rights defender Sokalo released on bail

By A Representative After almost five months in jail, Adivasi human rights defender and forest worker Sokalo Gond has been finally released on bail.Despite being granted bail on October 4, technical and procedural issues kept Sokalo behind bars until November 1. The Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) and the All India Union of Forest Working People (AIUFWP), which are backing Sokalo, called it a "major victory." Sokalo's release follows the earlier releases of Kismatiya and Sukhdev Gond in September. "All three forest workers and human rights defenders were illegally incarcerated under false charges, in what is the State's way of punishing those who are active in their fight for the proper implementation of the Forest Rights Act (2006)", said a CJP statement.

May the Earth Be Auspicious: Vedic ecology and contemporary crisis in Ashok Vajpeyi’s poetry

By Ravi Ranjan* Ashok Vajpeyi, born in 1941, occupies a singular position in contemporary Hindi poetry as a poet whose work quietly but decisively reorients modern literary consciousness toward ethical, ecological, and civilizational questions. Across more than six decades of writing, Vajpeyi has forged a poetic idiom marked by restraint, philosophical attentiveness, and moral seriousness, resisting both rhetorical excess and ideological simplification.

Would breaking idols, burning books annihilate caste? Recalling a 1972 Dalit protest

By Rajiv Shah A few days ago, I received an email alert from a veteran human rights leader who has fought many battles in Gujarat for the Dalit cause — both through ground-level campaigns and courtroom struggles. The alert, sent in Gujarati by Valjibhai Patel, who heads the Council for Social Justice, stated: “In 1935, Babasaheb Ambedkar burnt the Manusmriti . In 1972, we broke the idol of Krishna , whom we regarded as the creator of the varna (caste) system.”

Search This Blog