Even after eight years of accession to WTO, discussions on the subject of globalisation and agriculture in India is marked by disillusionment, confusion, suspicion and lack of unanimity in varying degrees.
Underlying all the pettifogging and bewildering range of controversies and headlines which hit our unmistakable free media about WTO and agriculture are three undeniable facts : first, there is a yawning gap between what WTO following the Uruguay rounds promised and what has so far been achieved; second, there is certainly no national consensus on the subject and there exists a wide hiatus between the protagonists and detractors of WTO, depending on how WTO impacts various affected groups; and third, three is an increasing gap between the perceptions regarding WTO in various concerned circles. Some view it as an economic concept while others view it as a new ideology or a sinister ploy of MNC-driven West. The fact that WTO is seen as a surprise thrust from above further aggravates the ‘legitimacy gap; and “credibility gap”.
The initial reactions to the Uruguay Round Agreement in India have been varied and the range of opinions has been from cautiously optimistic to sceptic to gloomy and even extremely negative. M.S. Swaminathan has raised the prophetic questions.
“Will it be possible to promote a new economic and ethical trade environment (within the GATT negotiations), which will help arrest the increasing marginalisation of the poor, growing unemployment and damage to basic life support systems? Will it be possible to ensure that private profit and public good are not antagonistic? Will it be possible to develop an intellectual property rights system which accords equal recognition to formal and informal innovation?”
The demonstration staged by the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha in 1992, by ransacking the Cargill Seeds office in Bangalore and urging the MNCs like Sandoz, Hoechst, Ciba-Geigy, Merck and Pacific to close their seed division; and demonstration called ‘Seed Satyagrah’ in 1993 is one end of the reaction, while the other end is the support by Maharashtra Shetkari Sangthan and Mann Segment of Punjab Bhartiya Kisan Union to trade aspect of WTO.
In India First, K.R. Malkani2 a noted personality of Bhartiya Janta Party, has remarked, “Ever since we opened up our economy too much too fast, we have been suffering massive dumping, resulting in closure of many Indian enterprises and consequential unemployment.” He quoted George Soros saying, “Market fundamentalism is today greater threat to open society than any totalitarian ideology.”
Loud protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, globalisation has emerged as a new paradigm in world trade. Globalisation may be broadly seen as a process that widens the extent and form of cross-border transactions among peoples’ assets, goods and services, that deepens economic interdependence between and among globalizing entities, which may be private or public institutions or government. Globalisation differs from other forms of intensified interdependence between national economies. True economic globalisation involves a qualitative shift toward a system based on a consolidated global market place for production, distribution and consumption rather than on autonomous national economies. Equally important, globalisation involves more than economics or economic connectedness. It increases risks and opportunities for individuals and communities seeking to transform local traditions and modes of behaviour in reaction to processes of globalisation that emphasize mobility, simultaneity, pluralism and alternate routes to the satisfaction of needs and services. Globalisation may also create the need for supra-national global governance regimes to maximize welfare globally. Such institutions and regimes may be needed to address cross-border market failures that national governments are unable to surmount or fully compensate for.
The cumulative effect of open borders, free trade and economic globalisation could mean the erosion of job security, food security etc. Thus while the effects of globalisation are profound and its integrative momentum powerful, it challenges the adaptive capacity of the nation-state, shapes tendencies towards ideological extremism. Disenchantment arising from the very uneven rewards of globalisation has led to strong reactions expressed as various forms of terrorism and efforts to assert the salience of particular and local identities.
Agriculture in India, as in many other traditional societies, is not merely an occupation of the people or a sector of economy or a major source of livelihood for vast majority of the poor, but it is a way of life and the foundation of age-old civilization. The traditional relationship between the people, land and agriculture has emotive overtones and any careless tampering with this delicate subject could unleash waves of violence, and social disruption. The whole culture, religion, philosophy, literature reflect the agrarian life pattern. The concept of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam is the bedrock of Indian civiliazation and few quotations from ‘Atharva Veda’ reflect this, such as : ekrk Hkwfe% iq=ksmga i`fFO;k%A (Land is our mother and we are the children of earth) and vUua% czEgsfr O;tkukr~A (Food grain is God and so should be the knowledge).
Unlike the West, the relationship between people and land in India is not felicific, utilitarian and materialistic; rather it is religious. Disruption of this delicate and sensitive bond could be catastrophic. Yet in order to increase India’s agricultural productivity to feed our ever-increasing population, we could stand to benefit from globalisation. In this crossroad, Gandhiji’s talisman appear very relevant.
I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt or the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restcre him to a control over his own life and destiny? In other world. Will it lead to Swaraj, for the hungry and spiritually starving millions?
Agriculture, to quote Gandhiji, is the soul of India and is the most crucial sector of the economy, for it provides food security, generates employment, helps to alleviate poverty and is a major contributor to country’s exports.
Agriculture in India was almost a gamble on monsoon in the pre-independence period, but over the decades significant advancements have been made in the creation of irrigation facilities, both major and minor and in the adoption of high-yielding varieties and use of chemical fertilizers etc. From 50 million tones in 1950, food-grain production has risen to 208 million tones by 2000. It has great potential in export of products of horticulture. India is the second largest producer of vegetables, having a share of 10% in world fruit crops.
Agriculture provides employment to 65 per cent of the workforce. Despite a declining share in GDP, from 52 per cent in the 1950s to 26 per cent at present, agriculture is still the single largest contributor to GDP. India exports agricultures products to the tune of 15 to 20 per cent of total exports. India has the potential to export not only food grains, but also a variety of agri-products. In 1999-2000, India’s exports and import of agricultural products (including cereals) totalled 376 and 472 million Dollars respectively.
India, despite the above scenario, has remained a marginal player in world agricultural trade with a share of less than two per cent. Although there has been an increase in export of rice, and India contributed about 10 percent of the international trade in rice in 1998-99, the country continues to be an importer of pulses, oil-seeds and edible oil. The export share of developing countries which constitute over three-fourth of WTO membership continue to remain around 30% of world trade in agriculture, which has been more or less the position about 25 to 30 year ago, thus, belying the anticipation during the formation of WTO.
In the global scenario, India today is the largest producer of tea, jute and allied fibres; possesses the largest number of cattle and buffaloes; the second largest producer of wheat, rice, groundnut, repressed, vegetables, fruits and sugarcane; has the second largest number of goats; has the second largest arable land and largest area under various forms of irrigation. India is the third largest producer of cereals, tobacco leaves, and cotton lint too and possesses the third largest number of camel and sheep. India is also the fourth largest manufacturer of tractors.
As analyzed by Ashok Gulati and Tim Kelly in their recent book Trade Liberalization and Indian Agriculture, Indian agriculture has gone through two crop revolutions in the last three decades – the ‘green’ and the ‘yellow’, both with the objective to achieve self-sufficiency. The green revolution that resulted in a spectacular growth of wheat and rice during the late 1960s and early 1970s, occurred in the highly irrigated areas of India. The yellow revolution, on the contrary, associated with quick spread of oilseeds since the 1980s, took root in less irrigated areas of low and erratic rainfall, a region referred to as the semi arid tropics (SAT) of India. The latter has brought about some dramatic changes in the cropping patterns in the drier parts of India, comprising more than three fifth of the net-cropped area. In the mid-1980s, India was importing about 30 per cent of its requirement of edible oils, bringing the already stretched Balance of Payments (BOP) account under severe strain. A decision was taken at that point of time of achieve self-sufficiency in edible oils by 1990, mainly with a view to reduce the burden on the precious foreign exchange.
A Technology Mission on Oilseeds was launched in May 1986, and this precipitated a gradual but steady rise in domestic market prices of oilseeds, as imports of edible oils were restricted through non-tariff regulations. This trend was further accentuated in 1989 when the Market Intervention Operations were launched to support prices in edible oil/oilseeds sector, with the National Dairy Development Board as the apex agency. India did achieve near self-sufficiency in edible oils by 1992-93, when its imports came down to almost a fraction of what they were in mid-1980s. Nearly seven million hectares of additional land came under oilseeds during this period, partly from Kharif fallows, partly from crop intensification and a substantial portion through crop substitution. The shift was largely from coarse cereals, but in some pockets even pulses and wheat gave way to oilseeds.
As a result, by 1992-93, India’s foodgrain production fell short of demand and India had to import three million tones of wheat at import parity price of more than Rs.5,000/- per ton as against domestic procurement price of Rs.2,250/-per ton paid to the Indian farmer. On the other hand, the domestic prices of edible oils were more than 60% above their import parity levels. A pathetic, paradoxical situation came into being : importing wheat at a much higher price that was being paid to the domestic farmer, while at the same time producing edible oils at almost double the world prices. This kind of situation gives rise to important questions related to resource use efficiency in the practice of agriculture, when countries in the world over have begun dismantling barriers in favour of openness in external trade. Question on policy to promote the SAT areas also needs to be addressed carefully in this new context.
Two recent developments in the national scenario necessitate serious rethinking on Indian agriculture. One is the economic liberalization programme launched in India in 1991 and India’s signing of the Uruguay Round Agreement (URA) of GATT in April 1994. Both these developments imply that, sooner or later, willy-nilly Indian agriculture has to come to terms with external trade in agriculture and increasingly face world markets, with the related questions of adjustment of cropping patterns, diversion of resources for optimality in the global context etc. The question of the safety of livelihood of millions of farmers engaged in sectors of agriculture considered sub-optimal and inefficient by global market standards would also has to be faced inevitable.
In this context it is important to understand the exact nature of the obligations that follow from Uruguay Round Agreements (URA), and their implication on various agriculture related policies for member countries in general, and India in particular. It is interesting to note that the agreement establishing the WTO recognizes, inter-alia, in its preamble in part II the need to raise standards of living, ensuring full employment and the need to ensure that the developing countries secure a share in the growth in international trade commensurate with the needs of their economic development.
The declared objective of the URA is to bring about transformation in World Production and Trade, which was then considered to be highly distorted by large-scale subsidies being extended to the agriculture sector in most countries. A number of scholars have pointed out that these direct and indirect agriculture-related subsidies result in artificial world prices of agriculture commodities. Domestic and export subsidies together with a range of protective measures such as quotas, variables levies and minimum import prices cause distortion in world price. This resulted in a situation of “deceptive comparative advantage” preventing efficient producers around the world from getting the benefit of their true competitiveness. In order to rationalize this scenario, URA commitments in the area of agriculture fall under three main categories, namely; a) market access, b) domestic support, and c) export competition.
As far as the market access commitments are concerned, all member countries are required to (i) replace all types of non-tariff barriers with tariff barriers and (ii) reduce the levels of tariffs under a time bound programme. These levels are to be reduced by 36% in the case of developed countries and by 24% in the case of developing countries. The period within which these reductions are to be taken up varies from six years in the case of developed countries to ten years in case of developing countries. The least developed countries are not required to undertake these reductions. Similarly, the minimum access tariff quota is to be assured at 3% of domestic consumption. However, if there is a surge of imports due to unfair trade practices, special provisions of the agreement allow any country to impose additional duties depending upon the difference between the import price and the trigger price.
Aggregate measure of support (AMS) is the annual aggregate value of market price support, non-exempt direct payments and any other subsidy not exempted from the reduction commitment expressed in monetary terms. Member countries have agreed to reduce these figures by 20% over six years for developed countries and 13% over ten years for developing countries. Least developed countries do not need to make any cuts. Measures with minimal impact on trade can be used freely – they are in a “green box”. They include government services such as research, disease control, food security etc. They also include payments made directly to the farmers that do not stimulate production, such as certain forms of direct income support, assistance to help farmers restructure agriculture etc. Also permitted are certain direct payments to farmers where farmers are required to limit production (sometimes called blue box measures).
In the area of export competition, the agreement calls for reducing direct export subsidies by 36% from their 1986-88 level in case of developed countries for a period of six years, and for developing countries, 24% for a period of ten years.
India is required to replace all types of non-tariff barriers by 2005. India used to maintain quantitative restrictions on the importation of 825 agricultural products. India proposed to eliminate the same over a seven years period. Recently, WTO was given a ruling that these QRs are to be replaced by tariff. At present India has bound its tariff rates on primary agriculture products at 100%& for processed food at 150% and for edible oils at 300%. As far as domestic supports are concerned India does not provide any specific support other than market price support. Product specific support, as calculated for 1995-96, for almost all the products are negative. This is so because the domestic administered price is much less than the international reference price and so the products specific support for most commodities are negative. Total non-product specific support in 1995-96 represent 7.5% of the corresponding total value of Indian agriculture production (USD million 76.736) and is accordingly below the relevant “non-product-specific” de minimis level. Where the support is below 10% product specific and non-product specific de-minimis ceiling can be raised to that level.
India is not required to reduce its domestic subsidies. Aggregate measure of support in India’s case, worked out to be – 22.5% of the total value of agricultural production. It is much less than the stipulated ceiling of 10%. Almost all the developed countries provide much higher support to their farmers.
Export subsidies are not present in India. The only subsidies available to exporters are in the form of (a) exemption of profits from export sales in income tax, and (b) subsidies on costs of freight on export shipments of certain agro-based products. The income tax exemptions are not covered under the list of subsidies given by WTO. And developing countries are allowed to provide three of the listed subsidies. These are reduction of export marketing costs, internal and international transport and freight charges. Therefore, for Indian subsidy reduction commitment is not going to have any significant impact.
So far, despite these provisions there has not been any appreciable change in the world agriculture export in the post UR ear.
Another important area which could affect Indian agriculture in a substantial manner, is the agreements on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPM) and the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). While the agreements on SPM emphasizes the right of the Governments to undertake SPM for food safety and animal and plant health, it also mentions that they should not be arbitrarily or unjustifiably applied to discriminate between members. Similarly, the TRIPS agreement seeks to standardize measures for the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights and develop a multilateral framework of principles, rules and disciplines dealing with international trade in counterfeit goods. The provision related to patents requires that 20-years patent protection be available for all inventions, whether of products or processes, in almost all fields of technologies, with some permitted exclusions from patentability. Plant varieties, however, must be protectable either by patents or by a sui-generis system (such as breeder’s rights provided in a UPOV convention).
The devil in these provisions lies in the details. Requirements of safety measures for human, animal and plant health is an open-ended subject, which can be used as a barrier to restrict and distort trade. Similarly, the patent rights can be misused to harass the farmers in developing countries by numerous and expensive litigations.
Indian position on seeds officially is that attempts would be made to safeguard farmers ‘rights as well as researchers’ rights by sui-generis system of protection.
One basic issue in the controversy on patents is that patenting plants, animals and seeds etc. would cause a serious disturbance in the balance between patenting rights and public interest, in principle. Secondly, while inventors draw on the world (public) pool of knowledge and prior research, how much credit belongs to the individual or enterprise and how much they owe to the world scientific community? Every scientist draws something from the common pool of human knowledge, from the shared heritage of the human race, from the public domain. As such, research and inventions in private sector in plant genetics, genes and germplasm need to be suitable rewarded, but it would be unethical and unacceptable to privatise knowledge and resources or to encourage monopolies, which could be exploitative. Thus there is a need for balancing the interests of the inventor with the public interests of the farmers.
In India, the Green Revolution has caused, what is termed as biological erosion. As breeders began to look for characteristics that could maximize yields and provide resistance to major diseases and pests, they discarded varieties, which to them had no potential value as economic crop. As former Director of I.A.R.I.. Dr. H.K. Jain says: “Over the last half century, India had probably grown over 30,000 different landraces of rice. In another 15 years, this enormous variety of rich diversity will be reduced to no more than 50 varieties, with the top 10 accounting for more than three quarters of the sub-continents rice acreage. Similar is the case of wheat.
India’s stand today is that, as of now, there is not much effective co-operation between the bio-technology-rich developed countries and the gene-rich developing countries. The efforts made so far are directed mostly at exploiting the vast genetic resources of the developing countries. So issues like national sovereignty over natural resources, linking access to bio-material to access to biotechnology, ensuring that countries which provide bio-material are assured of the benefits, including access to products and a fair share of the commercial profits on agreed principles need to be emphasized as was done during the bio-diversity convention.
India has to more carefully focus attention on SAT (Semi Arid Tropics) area comprising 175 districts hung low and erratic rainfall. SAT contains more than 60 per cent of India’s net cropped area, and produces 87 per cent of the total coarse grain output, 79 per cent of total pulses, 82 per cent of total oilseeds and 90 per cent of total cotton output of India. Obviously SAT is critical to the future growth of less water-intensive corps.
Rice and wheat have lower economic cost in domestic production vis-à-vis costs of importing or exporting them. Coarse grains, pulses and cotton are also efficient import substitutes. However, cost of producing oilseeds at home is much higher than the cost of import, which includes, ground nut, rapeseed, mustard and sunflower, with the exception of soyabean. Sugar/sugar-cane is an attractive proposition now because of shooting up of world prices of sugar by 150 per cent in the early 1990s.
Analysis (Gulati and Kelly) has established that, if India completely liberalizes external trade in agriculture, India’s exports and imports would go up, the net trade balance on account of agriculture would go up by 40 per cent over the base period of 1993-94, and rural incomes would rise by at least 3 per cent. The other interesting finding has been that the overall cost of living would not change significantly.
It is the oilseed producers of SAT area, who would be worst hit if edible oil sector is liberalized. It would be impractical to continue to protect this sector endlessly by high tariff barriers on imports. Alternatively, the SAT farmers should be encouraged to switch over the other crops like cotton, wherever feasible; to pulses in less irrigated tract and to wheat and rice, wherever good irrigation facilities are available. Opening up of rice, wheat, pulses, cottons etc. for exports would smoothen such a switch from oilseeds, as better and more attractive prices could be obtained.
Rise in prices of rice and wheat in response to export liberalization is likely to have an adverse impact particularly on poor consumers. So certain measures like targeting of food subsidies through PDS or launching of major employment generation schemes have to be thought of. Similarly, there is an urgent need to reform the domestic marketing and processing sector to reduce costs.
The possibility of diversification of cropping pattern in SAT towards high value crops like fruits and vegetable, floriculture and live stock products should be seriously addressed.
The possibility of diversification of cropping pattern in SAT towards high value crops like fruits and vegetables, floriculture and live stock products should be serious addressed.
The guiding principle in adopting sound policies should be net gain to society in terms of higher efficiency in resource use and higher consumer welfare.
History has witnessed cataclysmic peasant wars on a number of occasions, when traditional peasant societies have encountered profoundly alien pressures introducing commoditization of factors of production and commercialisation of agrarian scenario. Erich R. Wolf’s analysis of six case histories of “Peasant Wars in the Twentieth Century” – the Mexican, Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Algerian and Cuban – tends ample testimony to this phenomenon, which he describes as “the encounter with the world-wide spread and diffusion of North Atlantic capitalism.” Its hallmark, as Heibroner described in his book The Making of Economic Society is its possession of a social organization in which labour is sold, land is rented, and capital is freely invested.” Market society cut through the web of the custom, severing people from their accustomed social matrix in order to transform them into economic actors. They had to learn how to maximize returns and how to minimize expenditures, to buy cheap and to sell dear, regardless of social obligations and social costs. When previous market behaviour had been subsidiary to the existential problems of subsistence, now existence and its problems became subsidiary to market behaviour. These historical experiences have important lesson for the future of WTO and agriculture.
If WTO is not to fall into this ontological trap, it must adhere to the view of a farmer, to borrow from C.B. Macpherson, not as a consumer of utilities, but as a doer, a creator and an enjoyer of human attributes. Human being, in the larger global context is not to be seen as a bundle of appetites seeking satisfaction, but a bundle of conscious energies seeking to be exerted.
Undoubtedly, agriculture is going to be the most crucial and sensitive sector in the agenda for action for India in the context of WT, keeping in view its fragility and vulnerability. Globalisation under WTO gives both opportunities and threats to Indian agriculture. The approach, therefore, should be a careful and pragmatic combination of strategic optimism and tactical pessimism – i.e. plan for the long run while preparing for the worst, keeping in view India’s strengths and weaknesses.
At the national level, the focus should be on the vulnerability of Semi-Arid Tropical (SAT) areas where production of oilseeds and pulses may become unviable in the face of cheaper exports, as has been discussed earlier. Secondly, a range of measures like targeting food subsidies through PDS to launching of employment generation programmes should be carefully designed to provide safety nets to farmers and the poor likely to be under distress. Thirdly, fundamental infrastructure facilities alike irrigation, soil conservation, road density to facilitate transportation, storage etc. have to be expanded steadily to improve efficiency. Similarly, inefficiencies in the input manufacturing sectors like fertilizers, pesticides tractors have to be seriously addressed. Commission for Agriculture Costs and Prices worked out that 52 per cent of the subsidy marked for fertilizer actually went to the inefficient industry.
Food processing, horticulture, floriculture and allied activities like dairy and poultry have a lot of relevance in supporting the farmers to overcome the dislocation owing to globalisation. It has been estimated, for example that the total value of processed food sector is about Rs. 70,000 crore while it can be raised to Rs. 250,000 crore by 2008.
As per the report prepared by M.S. Swaminathan in 1981 and the study conducted by Department of Science and Technology in 1996, losses in certain fruits and vegetables range from 30 per cent to 40 per cent at post harvest stage due to poor storage, transportation, lack of infrastructure and the inadequacy of the marketing set-up which are to the tune of Rs. 50,000 crore. This is more than the value of fruits and vegetables consumed in country like U.K. Less than 2 per cent of fruits and vegetables product is processed in India, which is too low as compared to 30 per cent in Thailand, 70 per cent in Brazil, 78 per cent in Philippines and 80 per cent in Malaysia. The North-east region, other hilly areas, islands, desert and SAT areas can be developed as specialized areas for different types of fruits, vegetables, medicinal plants etc. Creation of a network of testing laboratories, cold storage, packaging units and development of food parks in various States with reference to their regional strengths would have to be given proper attention.
Fourthly, as Mehbub-ul-Haq, pointed out “While India’s high tariff rates allow the industry to get twice the international price for manufacturers, agriculture is denied international prices and is subjected to export duties.” The restrictive and outmoded legal and institutional arrangements pertaining to agriculture need to be thoroughly revamped.
There is an urgent need to promote research on poorly known and potentially useful plants and crops and crop diversification. Development of major collaborative programmes between research programmes of developed and developing countries under the auspices of FAO should be furthered.
Fifthly, conservation of land, plant and animal genetic resources for future use of biotechnology should be ensured. Mono-culture should be avoided. It is worth noting that while India stocks about 1,45,000 accessions of various crops, multinational genetic collections are stored at nine of the eighteen international agriculture research centres funded by the Consultative Group in International Agriculture Research (CGIAR), which have been the vehicles for the extraction of plant genetic resources from the third world and their transfer to the gene bank of Europe, North America etc. The Vavilov Institute in Russia has 3,50,000 plant accessions and the United States recently carried out a 12 million Dollar expansion of its National Seeds Storage Lab in Colorado, which already has a stock of 2,32,000 accessions, with a view to go upto one million samples.
Finally, there should be a careful review of agriculture policy in the context of the multi-functional aspect of agriculture, particularly with regard to food security, employment and sustainable development. There should be wide ranging participatory deliberations involving farmers’ associations, traders, food-processing industry, economists, political parties etc. to arrive at a shared consensus.
In the above context, there is a tremendous potential for growth in agricultural production as well as development of other allied sectors, which has the potential to attract investment from abroad. There is however, a need to urgently review the adjusting legal and institutional arrangements like fruit product orders, milk and milk product orders, restrictions on size of land-holding etc. It is quite evident that the country will stand to gain out of exports of rice, wheat and other export-efficient products, the gains from which can be ploughed back to support the areas which would be under threat.
At the WTO level, India need not be defensive as an opposing posture in creating hurdles to all moves towards globalization agriculture. India need not be alarmed by globalization, but neither should the country take a Cornucopian view of it. Policymakers ought to complement the external strategy of liberalization with an internal strategy of compensation, training, and social insurance for those groups who are most at risk. Based on the sound analysis of potential gains and losses, India should undertake pragmatic negotiating strategy and not behave like pigeons with closed eyes and thinking of the approaching cat, to quote Gulati and Sudha. Issues like binding maximum tariff to 50 per cent, reduction of tariff on each tariff line instead of aggregates, complete abolition of quota system, ceiling on domestic support not on AMS but on each product – specific support, inclusion of blue box measures in AMS, complete wiping out of export supports etc. should be boldly negotiated. Secondly, attempt by developed nations to introduce extraneous subjects like labor standards and environment issues should be opposed and implementation related issues should be carefully redressed. India should also collaborate with other developing countries for joint protection of common interests as the Doha ministerial conference has shown and to project important concerns like dislocation for local industry, reduced income levels, balance of payments difficulties and eventually a lack of domestic support for further liberalization. Coorperation with SAARC is an important area in the context.
In the above perspective, as Rubens Ricupero remarked in Seattle in 1999, there are two options before WTO. The first is to persist with the mercantilist approach of pressurizing the developing nations to further open markets that will soon become non-existent, as they will not be able to get through exports the resources they need to pay for their imports. The second is a “lift all boats strategy” that will allow the developing countries to export their way out of poverty, earning them the money to finance their imports of capital goods and technology from industrial countries. The second option of ‘live and let live’ only can bring about global survival, not survival of the fittest only.