Rajalakshmi: How do you assess the outcome of the Ministerial
Meeting of the World Trade Organisation?

Jairam: My own view is that India
has won. The fact that a programme of negotiations has been agreed to
is itself a confidence-building measure. At a time when the global economy
is in the doldrums, for 145 countries to get together and remove the
stain of Seattle and start a programme of negotiations in good faith
involving some trade-off, some compromise, which is inherent in any
kind of global negotiations, is a positive step. Seattle was a big setback
engineered by America, and one person responsible for that was former
U.S. President Clinton who gave an ill-advised interview in which he
tried to pander to the trade unionists and attempted to make a big issue
of labour standards and environment. The Western NGO (non-governmental
organisation) lobby, who I call neo-protectionists, torpedoed Seattle.
In the overall context, the Doha meeting is a major step forward. But
as it involves 145 countries and a whole range of issues, some compromises
and give-and-take had to be introduced.

Rajalakshmi:
India was making the point that before launching
a new round of trade negotiations, credible measures should be taken
to ensure that existing agreements were fully honoured. Did this stand
win the necessary endorsement in the final declaration? What have been
India’s gains?

Jairam:
India has won and Maran has lost. Many of the things we are claiming
victory for are a little premature. The issue of TRIPS (Trade-Related
Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) was on the cards and India
contributed to the debate. But our country went overboard on the textile
policy issue. India has been a great champion for the abolition of the
Multi Fibre Agreement. If we open up quotas faster, it will only help
countries like China and Korea. We fought the right battle on the implementation
issue. From the point of view of developed countries, they have fulfilled
the legal requirements of the agreements. A lot of the important issues
require amendment to the WTO agreement itself and changes in domestic
legislation. Maran gave the impression that all this happened automatically.
On implementation, he was on the right wicket. In fact, there is an
OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) report
on agricultural policies that shows that developed countries did not
fulfil their commitments made in the Uruguay Round. It is a controversial
report. Many Europeans I interacted with disown the OECD report . By
giving the feeling that there was an automaticity in implementation,
Maran did not give the right impression. He should have exclusively
focussed on agriculture, which is in our interest. It is one thing to
argue on the basis of emotion and rhetoric and another to argue on the
basis of hard facts, which Maran and his colleagues did not do. India’s
position was right on the question of amendments, but where India’s
position backfired was that India’s concerns could not have been met
without a new programme of action being launched.

Rajalakshmi:
The declaration contained stronger language on
the subject on environment than India would have wanted. The official
explanation was that it was a necessary compromise to get a commitment
on the “phasing out” of export subsidies in agriculture. Do you find
this a credible argument?

Jairam:
The more retrograde step is that the door has been opened on environment.
This is the thin end of the wedge, even though the agreement stipulates
that negotiations start only in 2003 and that countries that are not
signatory to multilateral agreements are not affected by it. India,
which is not a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, won’t be affected to
that extent. But it is bad economics and bad trade to have got environment
into WTO discussions. Another retrograde step from the developing countries’
point of view was to bring competition on the negotiating agenda, though
I would not put it in the same category as environment. Investment and
competition are things that developing countries have to look at autonomously
of the WTO. But environment is in your protectionist group. To the extent
that developing countries like India have been arguing that issues such
as investment and competition should be best left to discussion and
not negotiation, the fact that the WTO declaration commits itself to
negotiations on these aspects two years from now is something we could
have done without.