Civil societies demand white paper on WTO

New Delhi, Aug 31: National Commission on Agriculture Chairman Prof M S Swaminathan has warned that if India failed to take steps to safeguard food sovereignty, there would be massive unrest in the country.

''Without food sovereignty there would be no political sovereignty of the nation. If accession to the WTO increases livelihood insecurity among farmers, we ought to bring back quantitative restrictions,'' he said while delivering a special lecture on food sovereignty here last evening.

Participating in the national consultation on 'What the WTO Doha Development Round means for India', Prof Swaminathan said, ''Agriculture trade policy ought to be based on the maxim -- import less and live rather than export and perish''. On the issue of wheat imports, he cited the case of Canada which permits only the state-owned Canadian Wheat Board to procure from farmers.

The consultation, a joint initiative of Focus on the Global South-Mumbai, Food, Trade and Nutrition Coalition-Asia and Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security-New Delhi, was attended by government officials, academicians, policy analysts, farmer groups and representatives of civil society organisations from across the country.

With negotiations on agriculture and NAMA set to begin by next month at the WTO headquarters in Geneva participants voiced serious concerns on the implications of the current proposals on Indian Agriculture.

Former Union Minister M P Veerendra Kumar said that big corporations entry into agriculture was resulting in the loss of livelihood for farmers. ''Traditional crop varieties are being replaced and farmers are forced to rely on seed companies,'' he added.

In his inaugural address, Chairman of the Commision for Agriculture Cost and Prices Dr T Haq said, ''The paradigm shift in agriculture policy implies that self-sufficiency is no longer our goal. We should also recognise that this move to intergrate Indian agriculture with the world markets means that there is no role for small and marginal farmers in this country''.

Commerce Secretary G K Pillai spoke about the state of play in the negotiations and India's stand in the run up to the September talks in Geneva. ''The general consensus is that the Agriculture draft paper forms a good basis to form a deal that will be acceptable to India. On the other hand the NAMA paper has been rejected by 112 countries and is as good as dead,'' he emphasised.

Former Ambassador to the GATT, B L Das was sceptical about India's prospects to get a good deal out of the Doha Round.

''Given India's proposals on Agriculture and NAMA, even with the best of results, it is not in our national interest,'' he warned.

''With bulk of the subsidies parked in the Green Box, how can the Ministry of Commerce not demand its disciplining? Reducing trade distorting subsidies by a few billion dollars is not going to save our farmers from dumping of subsidized agri-commodities by developed countries,'' said food and trade policy analyst Devinder Sharma.

The US's claim that it is reducing subsidies is incorrect, said Dr Sachin Chaturvedi of Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS). While presenting an analysis of the Farm Bill 2007 Chaturvedi pointed out that the US has increased its allocation for subsidies which contradicts its stand at the negotiations.

Experts felt that Non Tariff Barriers (NTBs) and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) have been put on the backburner. ''IPRs have serious implications on our food sovereignty,'' said Dr Suman Sahai of Gene Campaign.

Highlighting the growing problem of rejection of exports by developed countries Vijay Sardana of Centre for International Trade in Agriculture (CITA) said, ''China is using SPS measures against the US to retaliate against export rejections.

Unfortunately, in our country, we have not yet formulated ways and means of using non-tariff barriers to protect our markets''.

The meeting came up with a set of concrete demands from the Government which included rejecting the present drafts on Agriculture and NAMA that will form the basis for restart of WTO negotiations in September.

It was unanimously decided to bring a white paper on gains and losses from WTO by the Ministry of Commerce and Quantitative Restrictions (QRs) be brought back to protect Indian agriculture.

The meeting also sought that autonomous liberalisation should be stopped and reopen negotiations on Article 27(3) (B) of the Agreement on TRIPS.

UNI