kehitysmaat & wto

Appeal to resist the launching of a new Round in Doha in November 2001

Indian People's Campaign Against Globalization

From the early 1980s through the emergence of the WTO, the tendency of the major industrial countries has been to cause the GATT/WTO mandate to transcend national frontiers and enter domestic policy areas on a whole range of new issues. The process was sought to be reinforced relentlessly in the period following the birth of WTO Marrakesh in 1995 and up to the Seattle ministerial meeting in Novermber-December 1999 which was intended to launch a "Millennium round" of negotiations. The process of "deeper integration" unleashed by WTO was seeking to enforce standardization of domestic policies in a wide range of issues including investment, competition, technology, government procurement, labour standards, taxation.

This process propelled by the main instrument of global capital viz. the transnational corporations, constantly in search of expanding space for their operations; bent on removing all impediments in their way: seeking to transform the nation-states as their willing agents, totally ignoring the adverse employment, distributive and even survival implications for the vast multitudes of people, and creating a new, uniform "culture" of commodisation and marketization of everything and anything,. And all this is being pursued in WTO in hight-handed, non-transparent and anti-democratic ways.

The inherent inequity and injustice of WTO's conception, structure and functioning is, however, becoming too obvious for even to the large sections of the affluent world, not to speak of the vast majority of the WTO membership represented by the African, Latin American and Caribbean region countries roundly criticized the "exclusion" being practiced at WTO and the undemocratic character of its negotiations and decision-making. Wide differences also surfaced among the major industrialized countries over the sharing of the spoils of the exploitative system. While the challenge to WTO was thus developing at Seattle from within, the real jolt to the system and the ruling establishments came from without. The spontaneous congregation of a vast number of organizations and forces opposed to the onslaught of the global corporate capital made a determined bid to stop the juggernaut of WTO at Seattle.

The Seattle episode temporarily resulted in a measure of self-doubt and some demoralization amongst the proponents of the new round of negotiations at WTO. However, this was only short-lived and the major industrialized countries soon renewed their offensive. There was a lot of talk of confidence-building measures to win over the opponents and the sceptics from developing countries. A good deal of meetings at different levels have taken place in Geneva. Pro-farma listing of concerns about the inadequacies and inequities in the existing agreements and functioning was done. But according to reports available, only five of the 55 major "implementation" concerns (the officialese for the inadequacies and inequities of the existing system) have so far received some attention, leaving major issues such as textiles and clothing, anti-dumping, review of TRIPs with no progress at all. Instead, it is now being argued by the industrial countries that progress, if any, in these issues can be expected only in new round with a broad mandate on new issues. In plain words, promises and expectations of the past round are being made hostage to the agreement to give away more and more on new issues!

The theme of major industrial countries has continued to be the need for further expansion of the negotiation mandate to cover new issues such as a global regime on investment and competition policies, a new discipline to cover government procurement practices and further pursuit, in some form or the other, the issue of the "social clause" and "environment", which are but euphesims for neo-protectionism of industrialized countries. And, of course, widening and deepening of liberalization of the services sector, clinching of unrestricted markets access in e-commerce and further reduction of tariffs in traditional trade including that in agricultural commodities. Although EU is cautious on further strengthening of discipline on agriculture, and US is pushing for greater measure of freer trade in agriculture, learning from the Seattle experience, the two trade major, viz. US and EU seem to have strategically narrowed their intensive differences in agriculture and investment so as to jointly threaten the rest with possible emergence of bilateralism, in case there is no agreement on what they must have in a new round. And the strategy already seems to be paying them the dividends in that a number of self-styled economists and experts have recently issued a statement expressing their total support to the launching of the new round.

A ministerial meeting of WTO is now scheduled to be held in Doha (Qatar) in November 2001. The venue has obviously been selected to successfully pre-empt any large scale popular outbreak of people's resistance. As regards to the agenda, the major industrial countries are again at their game of obfuscation, blackmail, arm-twisting and "divide and rule".

The US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick has arrived in India with the express intention of garnering Indian support to the new round. Press reports quoting senior government functionaries are already talking of "a subtle change of stand" from the erstwhile position of "no new round" to "taking care of core concerns". The danger of Indian Government capitulating to the US pressure is imminent.

The past experience with GATT/WTO negotiations as well as the inexorable logic of working a global capital should leave no one in any doubt that there is no worthwhile gain coming our way as a result of the new round which is being imposed by the industrial countries. So much was talked about in WTO documents about the trade gains from the Uruguay Round for developing countries worth billions of dollars. The Indian counterparts of the mercenary economists of WTO dutifully echoed these estimated and forecast huge gains for Indian industry as well as agriculture.

The facts however have turned out to be quite the contrary. We are experiencing mass annihilation of small and cottage industries in the face of cheap imports. Even organized sector is facing underprecedented challenge and retrenchments and lay-offs have become the order of the day. Agriculture, the last bastion of the national economy, is under severe threat of import competition. Horticulture, plantation industry, dairy industry, sugar industry, soya and even wheat and rice farmers are already experiencing severe difficulties. And as if this wasn't enough, service sector such as health and education are being opened up as part of the ongoing negotiations in service sector. At the other end, the outflow of IT sector exports of manpower and skills are facing stagnation in the American market. All in all, the dreams sought to be sold by the apologists of the Uruguay Rounf have turned into nightmares before our eyes in a space of seven years!

Since even the professional trumpeters of the global capital and the servitors of the Triad of WTO-IMF-IBRD would find it extremely difficult to present a case in terms on bountiful gains from the new round for the third world, there seems to be a new emphasis in their arguments on the possible collapse of multilateralism in face of the dark clouds of economic recession looming large at not only on the European horizon but also in America and, therefore, the need to propitiate the bigwigs to remain in the multilateral system even at the cost of making sacrificial offerings to them of further large chunks of the third world markets and economic sovereignity.

The argument is not new. It was the same argument that was effectively used by the Americans in 80's and 90's to push through their agenda of the then new round, later known as the Uruguay Round. That the same thret has to be employed again within less than a decade of the birth of WTO is an eloquent commentary not only on the hollowness of the so called multilateral system but also on the inherent unsustainability of the expansionist onward march of global capitalism.

The task before the people of India is clear: the launch of the proposed new round at Doha in November 2001 must be opposed. Government of India must be forced through mobilization of public opinion to stand firm in their opposition to the new round. The harmful effects of the past round are no longer a matter of debate: they are hurting the working people of India in farms and factories. Further liberalization od agriculture and industry will threaten the very survival of Indian economy. The sophistry about multilateralism and gains from market access stands thoroughly exposed in terms of our recent experiences.

Only task to be accomplished in WTO now is to get the iniquitous agreements like TRIPS thoroughly review to regain the lost autonomity in the sphere on national self-reliance and technological development. And a people's movement must be launched to ensure, if necessary, through a constitutional amendment that no more agreements be signed in WTO by the Indian Government except with the explicit approval of the Parliament and, in matters like agriculture which fall in the States' List, with similar approval of the State legislatures.

We call upon all patriotic elements, particularly the working people in farms and factories, the downtrodden and deproved sections of our society, and the intellectuals and activists engaged in the cause for opposing the onslaught of the global capital in all its forms, to join in the movement to further the tasks outlined above.

28.06.2002