RIS organized, jointly with Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development (CRRID), Chandigarh, the "Workshop on WTO: Agriculture and Intellectual Property Rights" in Chandigarh on May 30, 2003.

RIS Vice-Chairman, Ambassdor S.T. Devare inaugurated the Workshop. RIS members made following presentations: (1) Implication of Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) for South Asian Countries by Shri S.K. Mohanty, Fellow, and (2) Intellectual Property Rights: Plant Variety Proection and Biodiversity Issues by Dr. Sachin Chaturvedi, Fellow.

The presentations highlighted that the European Union, Japan and the US were among the most protected markets in agriculture and developing countries required substantial safeguards to remain in competition. They also talked about regional trade markets. It was stated that multilateralism is preferable to regionalism. The non-tariff barrier standards differ from one country to another. The market strategy should be country-specific and India should search for possibilities of disinvestment in different markets. There is need for protected markets to radically liberalise the agricultural sector, particularly in terms of domestic support and export subsidy to provide competition to the South East Asian countries. Reduction of trade barriers would have a significant impact on the global process. The existing rules were stringent to the interest of the developing countries and these issues should be raised in the forthcoming Cancun Summit. The emerging WTO regime also raises a number of issues of concern pertaining to biodiversity and the farmers rights, geographical indications.

The presentations were followed by discussions on the issues raised. A large number of audience from government, academic, research institutions, and media circles, attended and participated in the discussion at the workshop.