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The Indian People's Campaign Against WTO
(IPCAWTO) held a meeting on 27 July 2006 in New Delhi to take stock of the
developments in the Doha Round of negotiations in WTO. Shri VP Singh (Former
Prime Minister of India), Com. Prakash Karat (Communist Party of India-Marxist)
Com. AB Bardhan (Communist Party of India), Dr. Vandana Shiva (Navdanya), Mr.
NK Shukla (All India Kisan Sabha), Mr. BK. Keayla (National Working Group on
Patent Laws), Mr. Vijay Jawandhia (Shetkari Sangathan), Dr. Devinder Sharma
(Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security) and Mr. Prabhas Joshi (Journalist)
addressed the meeting amongst others. At the end of the meeting a statement
(given below) was adopted.
1. The Doha Round of Trade negotiations has been suspended following an
unsuccessful meeting of the G-6 in Geneva. The blatantly undemocratic nature of
the WTO was once again evident: The "suspension" was declared by the
D.G. of WTO at the behest of the exclusive G-6 who could not save their
non-transparent negotiations from a deadlock as a result of the intransigent
stance of the trade majors. The large majority of the membership of WTO
remained a mute and helpless spectator to this denouement. In this, the
deadlock is not of the kind that the WTO had witnessed earlier in Seattle or
more recently in Cancun.
2. The suspension of the negotiations, however, offers a temporary reprieve to
developing countries as the Round was loaded against developing countries right
from its beginning, notwithstanding the rich countries' gimmick of naming it a
'Development Round. But there is no cause whatsoever for any euphoria or even
complacency in the premature belief that the Round is dead.
3. The hopes raised by the 2003 Cancun meeting where developing countries
forced a deadlock were soon dampened by the so-called July 2004 Framework
agreement, a retrograde development where India and Brazil played a
contributory role. The 2005 Hong Kong meeting again witnessed India joining
hands with USA on the issue of services, breaking ranks with a large majority
of developing countries. While no modalities of negotiations in agriculture and
non-agriculture market access could be finalised at Hong Kong, indications were
already available about the likely cave-in by prominent developing countries
susceptible to the overt and covert pressure tactics of developed countries.
What has happened now is not attributable entirely or largely to the emerging
solidarity of developing countries. The primary cause of the collapse of
negotiations is the deep differences between EU and US on the issue of
agriculture, as indeed was the case earlier in the Uruguay Round; vis-à-vis the
deadlock at
4. There has been already a good deal of give away on the part of developing
countries, particularly, India and Brazil, in the area of Non Agriculture
Market Access (NAMA) or industrial products, as they have agreed to accept the
Swiss formula of tariff cuts with low coefficients, involving more than
proportionate, deep tariff cuts and almost universal bindings. This happened in
spite of strong opposition by smaller developing countries to this formula
because they feared it would cause loss of policy space and
de-industrialisation.
5. In the area of Services, India still perceives its interests as co-terminus
with the small but highly influential lobby of business process outsourcing
industry and exporters of software services. Consequently it had joined hands
with US at the Hong Kong meeting, thus breaking ranks with the large majority
of developing countries. It has offered a wide spectrum of services for opening
up to foreign service providers. It has also been pushing the negotiations on
the rules to circumscribe the policy space for domestic regulations in services
sector across the board. Thus this card too has been played out.
6. At the Press Conference held after the suspension of the negotiations, the
EU Trade Commissioner, approvingly mentioned that India's Trade Minister Kamal
Nath had shown 'flexibility' and offered to negotiate the number and treatment
of Special Products. Special Products and Special Safeguard Mechanism are the
two measures repeatedly cited by our negotiators as constituting the effective
and adequate mechanism to protect the interests of our farmers. They claim that
virtually all important agricultural crops and our small and marginal peasants
could be thus protected from unfair competition. These claims are questionable
ab initio. But Mandelson's praise for Kamal Nath is proof enough that even
these questionable and weak mechanisms sought to be built in ostensibly to
protect the interest of our agriculture are now up for negotiations, that is to
say, for further dilution.
7. It is not unlikely that in the coming months, EU and US come to some
understanding on agriculture (as indeed they have done in the past in reaching
the Blair House Agreement which resolved the USA-EEC deadlock on agriculture
and paved the way in 1993 for the ramming of the notorious Dunkel Draft down
the throat of developing countries). The heat will then be on developing
countries to open their markets in agriculture, industrial products and services
on the terms laid down by the two trade majors. At that point developing
countries, particularly India, will have no cards to play. And Kamal Nath's
brave statements that he is not prepared to negotiate away the livelihood of
millions of Indian peasants will turn out to be mere sound and fury.
8. This development must be seen in the broader context of the neo-liberal
economic policies being implemented across sectors in India autonomously by
successive governments, independent of the WTO. The policies of the present UPA
government and the blatant steps being taken by various state governments to
facilitate the corporate takeover of the agricultural sector calls for the
launch of a nationwide peoples' movement.
9. IPCAWTO, therefore, demands that Government of India use the opportunity
provided by the present collapse of the negotiations to harden its stand
a. to insist on the right to impose quantitative restrictions on imports of
agricultural products;
b. not to accept the universal bindings and deep tariff cuts on industrial
goods;
c. to exclude the forestry, fishery and mining sectors from the NAMA
negotiations in view of the livelihood implications for the vulnerable sections
of our people dependent on these sectors;
d. to revise its offers in the GATS negotiations drastically and defeat the
moves of developed countries to circumscribe the area of domestic regulations;
e. to revive the demand for the review of TRIPS mandated in the TRIPS Agreement
and insist on the General Public License in Software and Bio-technology.
10. IPCAWTO further demands that simultaneously the GOI initiate a move for an
inter-developing country Agreement on Trade and Cooperation in Agriculture
based on a paradigm entirely different from the paradigm of the present AoA
which is biased in favour of temperate zone, mechanised, large-scale,
agri-business- driven, trade-oriented and peasant-insensitive agriculture. The
new paradigm will eschew all these negative characteristics: it will be
peasant-centric; it will be founded on concepts of food sovereignty and
livelihood security; it will be based on the solidarity of the peasantry of the
third world and their mutual cooperation based on their diverse needs and
capabilities.
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