Search for a consensus

EVOLVING A NATIONAL consensus on contentious global issues is not just good governance it also strengthens the hand of the Government in international negotiations. So the call of the Commerce and Industry Minister, Mr. Murasoli Maran, for such a consensus ahead of the important ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation in Doha in November is a positive development. But considering the number of important issues that are involved and the strong positions of political, economic and social groups on all of them, the process of consultation has perhaps been delayed too long to offer the possibility of any substantive consensus over the next few months. In some areas a decision may even be reached at the WTO prior to the November meeting, over the next few weeks.

Since global negotiations inevitably involve give and take, the key to safeguarding India's interests at the Doha meeting will lie in a clear awareness of what India wants in return for having to agree to some of the proposals that other countries may make. A number of countries are beginning to ask that the Doha meeting should see the launch of a new round of wide-ranging trade talks to further liberalise world trade. But India has consistently opposed such proposals on the grounds that, one, imbalances that have emerged in the implementation of existing GATT/WTO agreements should first be corrected and, two, the WTO is already engaged in a dense agenda of negotiations in agriculture and services, reviews of existing agreements on intellectual property rights, trade-related investment measures and other issues so it will be counter-productive to expand the agenda. This stance has served India well over the past two years and a coalition of countries has been built around this position. But as more and more countries - the advanced and middle-income economies - seek to put the failure of the last ministerial in 1999 at Seattle behind them and as the differences among them get narrowed it could well become difficult for this coalition of largely developing countries to hold on to the same position at the Doha conference. The question then will be what India will want or can accept in three broad areas. First, proposals to further lower industrial tariffs. Second, demands mainly by the European Union to negotiate global agreements on foreign investment and competition policies. And, third, the long-standing and most controversial demand by both the U.S. and the E.U. to bring labour and environment standards into the WTO. Even the most ardent proponents of these proposals do not expect all the WTO countries to agree to the extreme of the proposals in each of these areas. But with most political and economic groups in the country still strongly opposed to trade liberalisation, India will find it difficult to digest talks on any of these areas even in the most watered down form.

Building a national consensus in this situation is not just important, it is also difficult to achieve and certainly cannot be done in a short period of time. If the Government were to lay out the entire range of options in each of the areas that has been talked about as a potential sector of negotiations the political, economic and social groups in the country may have a better idea of what is possible and what cannot be realised. The possible ``costs'' could be set off against the ``benefits'' from the proposals that the Government has already placed on the table regarding its expectations from the ongoing negotiations and reviews. Besides a solution to the ``implementation problems'', these include placing health concerns at the centre of a review of the WTO patent regime, stronger protection to products such as Basmati rice which have geographic indications and a faster and more meaningful reduction of agricultural subsidies in the E.U. and the U.S.

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Section  : Opinion
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