Supreme Court

Yesterday I had my meeting with Prashant Bushan, the lawyer who Dr. Shiva recommended I go see. He is worth googling because he is actually very famous. While I was at his office a news team came to interview him about the Supreme Court.

In India across from the Supreme Court is the lawyers’ building where many, though not all, of the lawyers who try cases in front of the court have their offices. While struggling with the guard in front of the Supreme Court a passerby heard my repeated pleas for Prashant Bushan’s office, my voice elevating to bridge the language gap. Luckily he knew Prashant, telling me that all of the lawyers who worked for social justice knew eachother because there were so few of them. It shouldn’t surprise me to hear the majority of lawyers in India are there only for the money.

The role of the Supreme Court in India is explicitly to be the caretaker of the fundamental rights of people, especially the poor. This is an interesting concept especially in the context of the misguided doctrine of standing in the US. Standing is a judicially self-imposed doctrine which among other things has the requirement that there be "actual injury." US Supreme Court cases reveal that even if there is an injury to a person, say from the government failing to obey its own laws, a regular citizen does not have standing to sue unless that injury is distinguishable from that of any other person. By this logic even though the entire citizenry maybe suffering under some act or failure to act of the government (global warming?) they would not have standing.

In India, however, the Supreme Court entertains what is known as public interest litigation in which a person or group of people can file a Writ of Petition with the court to hear a matter of public concern. As with any political body the effectiveness and the progressiveness of this system waxes and wanes. The system, however, I think is good (in so far as you can ensure effective judicial administration) since as in any country there must be some recourse for the people who have been hurt by the policies of the other branches of government.

I took my seat in Mr. Bushan’s tiny office next to a man screaming into his cell phone. The cell service is fickle and as a symptom voices rise and a chorus of hello? hello? hello? hello? plagues the streets.

There were two law clerks there, occupying a space of perhaps 4x6, the rest of the office could be closed off by a sliding door and was no bigger than 10x6. The volumes of the Supreme Court reporter lined the shelves.

We discussed the problems of seeds being copyrighted by corporations and when I left I narrowed it down to three aspects with which to work:
First, perhaps there is a way to prohibit companies from mandating in their user agreements that farmer’s cannot save the seeds.
Second, perhaps there is a way to challenge the novelty of the copyrighted seeds and provide and more rigorous process for copyrighting.
Finally, there is a very lax system regarding certifying the safety of genetically engineered organisms so to assure more oversight and thorough testing would be beneficial.

The challenge is to work within the legal framework which already exists. My preference would be for India (and all countries for that matter) to withdraw altogether from this system of neoliberal economics and WTO policies. Of course that is unrealistic and we have to chip away gradually at the armor of the corporate profiteers.

The more I am reading about how the system of seeds in working in India the more skeptical I am that legal action directed at Monsanto and Cargil is the answer. Unless that action were to force them to withdraw from the country altogether. As it is now farmers do have the choice to use their traditional seeds but a combination of factors allow them to be duped into using the corporate genetically modified seeds which come with user agreements and terms which eventually devastate the farmers. The solution it would seem to me is better education, equipping farmers with the knowledge to make more informed decisions about their future. Perhaps our role here is just to preserve the opportunity for farmers to choose their own seed future.

Although it has not yet happened in India (because the farmers probably aren't worth suing) the precedents in other countries have revealed the willingness of Monsanto to sue organic farmers for not using registered seeds (read: corporate seeds).

After visiting Mr. Bushan, I walked down the street to the Indian Society of International Law where I browsed the library and found out about some courses and lectures I hope to attend. There is one two day seminar on the Geneva Conventions and another week long program on International Law. Even if I can't make it to the whole thing I hope to get a taste of what they are teaching here.

The night found us making dinner, my computer perched in a patio chair, the Hindi music punctuated by the rhythmic chopping of green beans and potatoes. We dozed off to the sounds of Aladdin, the only movie I brought from home.