New Delhi, 2 December 2013: As Ministers gather in Bali for the 9th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to be held from 3 to 6 December 2013, the NTUI calls on the Government of India to ensure that it does not sign on to a set of terms that would further dilute its autonomy in policy making. The NTUI joins several other peoples’ organisations and social movements across the country, in condemning the malicious intent of countries in the global North to force through proposals that provide no gains for the global South. These proposals will compromise our country’s ability to legislate sovereign policies on food, agriculture and imports.
While several issues are being discussed in the run up to the Ministerial, the NTUI is especially concerned about two issues – trade facilitation and agriculture – that are being advanced at Bali.
India’s balance of payment is in crisis. Therefore, binding commitments on imports facilitation, as part of the trade facilitation, being proposed at Bali, are potentially highly detrimental to India’s economic stability. In addition, commensurate facilitation for imports from the South to the North have not been included in the draft agreements, violating the fundamental principle of reciprocity in international law and reinforcing the inequality between developed and developing countries. The trade facilitation proposal is aimed at further accelerating integration of developing countries into global supply chains. Experience however shows that the Indian industry has the capacity only to enter these supply chains at low levels of value addition and technology. Entering the supply chain at the lower end provides limited benefits to the national economy and low-paid, non-standard and volatile patterns of employment. Accelerating this process would be detrimental to the Indian economy and its working people.
The proposal on trade facilitation has received support from some sections of the business community which is increasingly reliant on trade and financial activities and on labour intensive manufacturing that relies on workers on poverty wages. Building an economy on narrow interests, financial and commercial arbitrage and non-standard work will only worsen the lack of effective demand and growing income inequality both of which have contributed to pushing the economy into recession. Policy measures to shore up effective demand, including through measures to restrict inequality, are imperative for returning the economy on to a growth path.
The NTUI as a member of the Right to Food Campaign joins its call for a comprehensive legislation on food security, which goes beyond distribution and consumption, and provides support to small and marginal peasants to enable them to maintain their livelihood and continue producing food. India’s small peasants and landless agricultural workers are a critical part of our food supply chain. In light of the fact that Government has failed to resolve the economic and livelihood crisis in the rural areas and build a stable, sustainable and growing urban sector in which surplus rural workers can be absorbed in dignified conditions of work, it becomes the constitutional obligation of the Government of India to protect the interests of small and marginal farmers and agricultural workers and provide food for its population.
Policies on public procurement of food grains, the Public Distribution System (PDS) and the recently enacted National Food Security Act (NFSA) are partial attempts at addressing these challenges. Under the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture (AoA), ‘Public Stockholding for Food Security Purposes’ is allowed within a 10% limit. India has been close to breaching the 10% of production cost subsidy limit. With the enactment of NFSA, the possibility has become even more unlikely. Under these circumstances, the Government of India was correct in leading the G-33 coalition of developing countries, in advancing a proposal for the Bali Ministerial that public food programmes for supporting livelihoods of small farmers and food consumption of the poor should be allowed without limits. In the course of discussions, however, the G-33 proposal has been diluted and the ‘peace clause’ that is now on offer is both time bound and would open legislation such as NFSA or subsidy to agriculture to be left open to being challenged under WTO’s dispute resolution machinery. This proposal would not just undermine policy autonomy but could be an elemental attack on the limited food security that this country’s working people enjoy. The NTUI calls upon Government to stand firm against all pressures on it to consent to any agreement or concessions that would require it to place curbs on implementation of both the NFSA and agriculture subsidy. Furthermore, NTUI calls upon government to ensure that it does not enter into such agreements that will expand the role of contract farming, foreign direct investment in agriculture and the use of GM technology in the absence of adequate testing and scientific safeguards.
As the global crisis has deepened food security has come to be undermined in many developing countries. A country’s right to food sovereignty must be inviolate. The WTO Agreement on Agriculture (AoA), the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures and Article XVI of GATT 1994 (subsidies) cannot stand in the way of a country’s right to ensure food sovereignty and the necessity for combating malnutrition, while promoting sustainable livelihoods. Indigenous production of food for domestic consumption cannot under any circumstances be treated as a trade distortion. The NTUI calls on Government to initiate a process that will lead to a declaration on Food Sovereignty in consonance with the Doha Declaration on Public Health.
The creation of the WTO has been marked by excessively unbalanced trade-offs, that are against the interests of developing countries. The NTUI believes that a process of negotiations based on accommodation and concession between unequal partners will ultimately reinforce and further skew inequality. The NTUI reiterates its support for a mechanism of international trade as based on principles of mutual cooperation, benefit, respect and trust that allow countries to complement their economies, defend livelihoods, including on food and health security, and foster autonomy in national development.
The NTUI stands in solidarity with the trade unions, social movements and other progressive groups that have called for a week of action against the WTO in Bali and will join these activities to further an alternative agenda on trade cooperation and sustainable national development for social and economic justice.
Gautam Mody
General Secretary