THE Government of India's Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare's aggressive attempt to reform a sector essential to India's food sovereignty is the Draft Seeds Bill 2025, made available on November 12 for public comment until December 11. The Godi Media has framed the draft bill as a necessary modernisation. The seed industry, represented by bodies like the Federation of Seed Industry of India, has lavished praise, calling it a timely step toward facilitating business and investment. For farmers' unions, however, this draft legislation is a blatant declaration of war, a corporate charter disguised as reform that will annihilate farmers' autonomy and deepen their distress.

In a world of debt and climate chaos, seeds are not just an input but the foundation of agricultural survival, dictating a farmer's financial destiny. An oligopoly of multinational behemoths largely controls the lucrative Indian seed market, which reports estimate to be worth around 3.82 billion USD. Their profits soar despite farmers being subjected to predatory pricing. This draft bill, which has been in the works for 20 years since the 2004 attempt, comes after the unsuccessful 2019 draft that was halted by the overwhelming force of the historic farmer protests, whose leaders made it clear that only their movement had prevented passage of the bill.

DRAFTING FOR CORPORATES

The 2025 draft bill's main points are: promoting "ease of doing business", mandatory centralised registration for all seeds except traditional farmers' varieties, pushing digital traceability through QR codes, and establishing a Central Accreditation System that grants national market access to large corporations by overriding state-level scrutiny. It proposes penalties up to Rs 30 lakh for violations. However, these fines flow to the state, not to devastated farmers, and the draft bill specifically omits any statutory, time-bound compensation mechanism for crop failure, forcing farmers, as unions have said, back into the labyrinth of consumer courts. Crucially, there is concern that the Bill dilutes federalism by stripping states of their powers. The current Seeds (Control) Order 1983 was issued under the authority of the Essential Commodities Act, 1955. The new draft bill  would effectively displace the legal lever that states previously used to regulate seed prices and royalties under the Essential Commodities Act, which once allowed states like Telangana to cap prices. The proposed draft bill mandates that States "forthwith" accept centrally accredited companies, which would make them mere rubber stamps.

Progressive scientists and analysts have responded with a thorough and critical critique. The Scientists for Genetic Diversity and experts contend that the draft bill is a "facilitation" over regulation, designed for commerce rather than farmers' rights. They reveal how its provisions regarding foreign certification organisations and imported seed trials compromise national sovereignty, enabling foreign data to circumvent India's varied agroclimatic conditions and possibly creating an opening for unproven genetically modified seeds. Uncapped compensation for total economic loss, criminal liability for corporate executives, clear protection for farmers' rights under the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights (PPVFR) Act, and strong support for community seed banks are among the non-negotiable amendments they demand.

RESISTANCE FROM THE FIELDS

In a fierce and unequivocal response, the All India Kisan Sabh (AIKS) has mobilised its sixteen million members across 27 states to declare an all-out war against the Draft Seeds Bill 2025, denouncing it as a "disastrous piece of legislation" and a "coordinated surrender" to multinational agribusiness interests. AIKS has squarely accused the government of launching a "triple assault" on national sovereignty, strategically linking this draft bill to ongoing Indo-US trade talks that threaten to weaken patent laws and to India's capitulation at the GB11 session of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources, where the delegation's silence betrayed farmers' rights to benefit-sharing. The organisation has severely criticised the draft bill's core premise of "Ease of Doing Business" as a grotesque perversion of legislative intent in a sector where four foreign oligopolies—Bayer, Corteva, Syngenta, and BASF—already command 56% of the global seed market, enabling predatory pricing that is pushing Indian cultivators deeper into debt and despair.

Rather than merely rhetoric, the AIKS response is a comprehensive, militant manual for resistance. They have categorically rejected the draft bill's hollow affirmation of farmers' rights, pointing out that while it makes reference to saving and exchanging seeds, it deliberately omits any statutory, time-bound mechanism for compensation when corporate seeds fail, instead offering a fictitious "good faith" clause that grants businesses legal immunity. AIKS demands iron-clad amendments: a permanent statutory body with the power to regulate seed prices and royalties, the immediate cancellation of licenses and blacklisting of companies selling spurious seeds, and the establishment of block-level compensation tribunals to deliver restitution to farmers before the next sowing season. The centralising thrust of the draft bill, which requires states to "forthwith" accept centrally accredited corporations and forcibly overrides state powers under the Seed Control Order of 1983, has been criticised by them as a flagrant violation of federal principles and the constitutional division of powers.

Putting the condemnation into practice, on December 10, a date symbolically chosen in honour of freedom fighter Babu Genu, AIKS organised a nationwide Protest Day in which farmers from various districts, blocks, and villages took to the streets and burned copies of the draft bill in an act of defiance. This mobilisation came after widespread demonstrations on December 8, when people burnt the draft bill under the Samyukt Kisan Morcha banner linking it to the unmet demands of the 2020–21 agitation.  AIKS has framed these protests as a critical battle to stop the government from surrendering the country's seed sovereignty, warning that the draft bill will annihilate indigenous seed varieties, destroy public sector institutions, and place the entire crop cycle at the mercy of multinational corporations whose control will be near impossible to check once this legal architecture is in place. Their fight is a definitive rejection of the draft bill's pro-corporate nature and a resolute demand for its complete withdrawal.

NOT FOR FARMERS

What happens now, as past experience suggests, is a charade of consultation.  It is a 30-day eyewash that farmers believe is designed to legitimise a pre-ordained corporate takeover. The question of whether the draft bill is pro-farmer or pro-business has been answered unequivocally by the streets and the fields. The draft bill meticulously constructs, as has been pointed out, a legal architecture for corporate dominance—centralising control, deregulating prices, externalising certification, and eroding community systems—while offering farmers hollow rights on paper and brutal hardship in practice. The Seeds Bill 2025, as proposed, should be considered as nothing but a  blueprint for establishing a seed oligarchy rather than for safeguarding farmers.