A few correspondents asked, in response to my Order 81 story from last week, why India had let Monsanto to start selling genetically-modified seeds in-country when they had kept them out for so long. My response, somewhat to my embarrassment, was largely "dunno." But an anthropologist by the name of Keith Hart, who I'm hoping won't mind being cited here, sketched out a possible answer: India passed the Patents Amendments Act in 1999 to conform to the WTO's TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) agreement -- partly because it really wanted to enter into a nuclear deal with the U.S. Seems plausible to me.
