Next time you get a wonderful whiff of freshly cooked Basmati rice, remember this: In 1997, the Texas based RiceTec Inc. obtained Patent No. 5663484 from the US Patent Office on Basmati rice lines and grains. So?

India possesses tremendous diversity in rice varieties reflecting the culmination of centuries of informal breeding and evolution by the farmers of this country. Tilll recently, farmers grew over 30,000 varieties of rice. Will small farmers in Asia be having to pay royalties to a multinational company each time they grow and eat rice?

The UN has declared the year 2004 as the International Year of Rice and this month in January the World Social Forum comes to India. People from around the world are gathering at Mumbai to question and change the way the world grows its food, does business, science and trade that harms people and the environment. We hope you also believe that ‘Another world is possible’! Now let me get back to my steaming dal chawal...

– Pandit Gobar Ganesh
E-mail: panditji@cseindia.org