‘India needs to focus on coalition building at WTO to keep protecting farmers, fishers’ interest’

India managed to protect its interests in agriculture and fisheries at the 13th WTO Ministerial Conference in Abu Dhabi last week but needs to focus more on coalition building to keep new issues out of the multilateral framework and build greater pressure on rich nations for delivery of permanent solution on public stockholding at the next MC in Cameroon, say experts.

“India should use the time until MC14 (about two years) to highlight the unfairness and flaws in the Agreement on Agriculture (AOA). The existing rules are so flawed that if India declares MSP at ₹4 per kilo of rice, it still violates the limit even though the market price of rice is ₹20/kilo. This is just one of many biases in the agreement,” Ajay Srivastava, Founder, Global Trade Research Initiative told businessline.

Since there’s little hope that negotiators from developed countries will address these issues, India should take the problem on Public Stockholding (PSH) to the global citizens through social media platforms, he added highlighting the need to build popular opinion on the matter.

The WTO MC13 in Abu Dhabi last week failed to produce agreements in either agriculture or fisheries subsidies. While India was mostly able to protect its defensive interests, it did not get the long-promised permanent solution to the issue of PSH to fully protect its MSP programmes and secure the right to expand new programmes without worrying about subsidy limits.

Permanent solution

“India has to keep pushing for permanent solution, but it should not be limited to updation of External Reference Price (fixed at 1986-88) but should be ERP plus. In the area of fish subsidies, the balance of the agreement has to change by strengthening the disciplines on those responsible. Also, the building of coalitions is very important to keep out the Joint Statement Initiatives (JSIs) using the successful example of Investment Facilitation,” said Ranja Sengupta, Senior Researcher, Third World Network.

India needs to have a definite strategy in place for the various challenges it is facing which includes how to create and sustain coalitions on specific issues, said Abhijit Das, an expert in foreign trade.

“Another big challenge is on the JSIs. The very fact that over 120 countries supported the China-led Investment Facilitation for Development pact makes India’s task of upholding WTO as a multilateral institution that much harder,” he said.

Pushing Forward

Das identified PSH as the third big challenge. “We have been agitating on this issue for over a decade. We have the support of 80 countries. Yet there is no forward movement. So, we need to see what else we have to do to push it forward,” he said.

Coalition building amongst developing countries needs to be definitely stepped up, agrees Jayant Dasgupta, former Indian Ambassdor to the WTO. 

“The WTO was meant to provide additional market access but it can’t be for countries’ commercial agricultural interest at the cost of poorer countries where the larger chunk of population is heavily dependent on agriculture for livelihood,” he said.

The formula for cuts in domestic subsidies being pushed by the Cairns group of agriculture exporting countries will result in India taking the deepest cuts and the US taking the least cuts, Dasgupta said. “Hurting livelihoods of our farmers and fishers by cutting agri and fisheries subsidies is a no go area for India. But we have to give more reasons for that and also look at the other side’s proposals. It has to be a dialogue. However, we cannot compromise on our core interest,” Dasgupta said.