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India needs to be circumspect at Doha

G. Srinivasan

NEW DELHI, June 21

EVEN as New Delhi has openly expressed itself against coupling the next WTO Ministerial Conference with the launch of a new round of trade talks, the trade majors like the US and the European Union (EU) have underlined the need to launch a new round as p art of the Ministerial meeting scheduled to be held in Doha in November.

The Union Commerce and Industry Minister, Mr Murasoli Maran, has not timed his appeal to the developing world for evolving a concerted and coordinated stance among themselves in effectively bringing unfinished agenda of the Uruguay Round (UR) agreements as also implementation concerns of these pacts. That the cohesiveness sought is elusive needs hardly be stressed because in the WTO dispensation like-minded approach barely makes any impact because each one works for its own enlightened self-

interest.

Moreover, even as Mr Maran made a common cause for delinking new round with the Ministerial as the time is not ripe for yet another round when the impact of the UR has left many developing countries groaning under globalisation and liberalisation, the US and the EU held a summit in Gothenberg (Sweden) on June 14, 2001 in which they said that ``we are committed to launching an ambitious new round of multilateral trade negotiations at the WTO Ministerial in Doha'' and claimed that they have made progress towards ``this shared goal'' in their high level discussions in recent weeks.

What is important is that both the US President, Mr George Bush, and the EU President, Mr Romano Prodi, promised to work closely together ``with our partners in the coming weeks to secure consensus to launch a round based on this substantive and forward- looking agenda.'' That both the EU and the US matter in any multilateral trading system is beyond a pale of doubt.

In fact, on June 7, 2001 addressing the Economic Strategy Institute in Washington, the EU Trade Commissioner, Mr Pascal Lamy, likened both the US and the EU as the biggest trading elephants in the jungle as both count for about 20 per cent of world trade and a slightly higher percentage of foreign direct investment.

Underlining the urgent need to launch a new Round, the EU Trade Commissioner cited three overriding reasons for this. First, the global economy badly needs a boost. Second, it must be recognised that failure to launch at Doha would mean immediate damage to the world trading system and to the WTO in particular. Third, because the Round is the mechanism by which ``we update and modernise the rule-based multilateral trading system.''

Even as both the US and the EU have mutual problems on some contentious issues, Mr Lamy said in a lighter vein that ``while solving our mutual disputes is a vital test for the behaviour of the elephants, the real test of our credibility comes at Doha in November.''

By staking their very credibility as a touchstone for the launch of a new Round, it would not be far off the mark to state that both the elephants with which India has a good economic and geopolitical relations in recent months could ill-afford to spurn the elephantine gesture when stakes involved are great for India.

For critics who read too much about WTO and its ill-effects, the chief of the WTO has a riposte in his address at the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) in Geneva where Indian Parliamentarians including Mr Sharad Pawar took part on June 8.

The WTO Director General, Mr Mike Moore, contended that multilateral trading system is not a threat to national sovereignty but an opportunity for countries to enhance their sovereignty in global affairs.

``My argument today is that a multilateral system, far from being the new colonialism, opens up the privileged positions of the powerful to transparency and competition. The multilateral system, which is owned by Governments is not a new form of colonial ism. It is, in fact, the final nail in the coffin of imperial and domestic privilege,'' Mr Moore said.

With such unorthodox reading of ground reality, it would be inexpedient on the part of authorities in New Delhi to imagine that they could deflect the course of events being increasingly dictated by Washington and Brussels where the world's puissant bure aucracy holds sway.

At least, India could refrain from expressing itself against the launch of a new Round at a time when the world's trade majors are determined to initiate one. In the ultimate analysis, India's cannot be a voice in the wilderness when the rest of the worl d chime in to the tunes of the elephants.