New League for the Indian Agriculture - Advent of Intellectual Property Rights

With the advent of the new knowledge economy, the old and some of the existing management constructs and approaches would have to change. Intellectual property rights (IPR) have become important in the face of changing trade environment which is characterized by the following features namely global competition, high innovation risks, short product cycle, need for rapid changes in technology, high investments in research and development (R&D), production and marketing and need for highly skilled human resources. Agriculture is a way of life, a tradition, which, for centuries, has shaped the thought, the outlook, the culture and economic life of the people of India. The importance of the agricultural sector as a source of food, incomes, employment and often foreign exchange cannot be overstated. As much as good health, a productive and sustainable agricultural sector is critical to achieving economic growth and poverty reduction. The recognition of agriculture as a rule-bound enterprise of investment and profit making became obvious with its inclusion in the intergovernmental negotiations for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) for the first time in the Uruguay Round (1986-1994). This round led to the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in January 1995. Now, the WTO has at least half a dozen intergovernmental agreements that directly affect agriculture. These are Agreements on Agriculture (AoA), Applications of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS), Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT), Anti-Dumping, Subsidies and Countervailing Measures, Safeguards, and Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs).