Page:Sharad Joshi - Leading Farmers to the Centre Stage.pdf/310

 one should steal someone’s patented invention and if they wanted to use that invention they should buy it by paying the proper royalty. That last point was particularly objected to by the Indian companies, particularly pharmaceutical companies. Because most of their business consisted of using the basic research done by overseas companies and use that, with minor modifications, to produce drugs under their own brand names. This saved them all the expenditure on research. Dunkel Draft wanted them to buy such right to use someone else’s research, treating that research as the Intellectual Property of the company which had originally developed that drug. Obviously Indian pharmaceutical industry was dead opposed to Dunkel Draft. Joshi was absolutely convinced that each of these five points was greatly beneficial to the Indian farmers and in a way Dunkel had incorporated what Joshi had been saying all those years. For instance, Joshi had always held that the levy procuremeat price paid by the government was ridiculously low and was the primary reason for the poverty in India. Increasing that levy procurment price would naturally mean more money in the hands of the farmer which was long overdue. Similarly, since the cultivable land in India was limited and the population kept growing, the size of the farm holding in India had already decreased to a level where it was uneconomic to farm. In such a situation if those who today depended on agriculture could be provided livelihood outside, that would certainly benefit those who continue farming. Removing restrictions on export would enable Indian farmers to export their goods to developed nations. It would also mean that the excess stock would not remain in India, reducing domestic prices. Similarly, on the question of subsidies, Joshi argued that Search for New Ways

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