CALCUTTA, India, June 18 (UPI) -- Back in November 1981, several heads of government including Indira Gandhi India's prime minister then -- who was assassinated three years later -- met in Cancun, Mexico, at the invitation of ex-president of United Sates, Ronald Reagan, to talk about this and that.
One of the successes that emerged out of that chitchat was a broad but vague consensus that the world needed a new round of trade talks. The result, after a great deal of deliberations between global leaders between then and 1996, was the Uruguay Round and the World Trade Organization.
For the Indian prime minister and her official delegation, that meeting was successful in another aspect; reportedly the Indian team got to enjoy the balmy waves of the famed beach resort.
But come September, when India's commerce and industry minister Arun Jaitley, along with around 10 of his bureaucrat colleagues, wings his way to Cancun, he is unlikely to get the time to catch any waves on the beach at all. Surfing, though, he will be in the treacherous waters of international trade. That's because between the 10th and 14th of the month, an estimated 2,000 negotiators from the 145 member countries of the World Trade Organization, will descend there to participate in the most wide ranging and, hence, also the most ambitious trade negotiations jamboree.
And, India fears that the divided world that currently exists may make the consolidation of India's gains from the previous round of WTO meetings at Doha, Qatar, nearly impossible.
"Progress on negotiation of the Doha agenda is now faced with many deadlocks, said T.K. Bhowmik, trade analyst and chief of the WTO cell at Confederation of Indian Industry, one of the country's most influential industry lobbies. "WTO, today, is a victim of the sky-high ambitions of developed countries, who are evidently bent upon using the trading body to serve their ends. Developed countries have succeeded in doing that ever since the days of the Uruguay round, but they have become very aggressive about it now, apart from showing their impatience towards the views of developing countries."
Two years ago, at the last big WTO summit in Doha, India and some developing countries like it, had won assurances that trade rules and terms would be modified to give them greater access to lucrative markets in developed countries, besides giving them leeway in some areas. For example, the assurances on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights and public health assured easy access to critical drugs at affordable prices. Then, a new agreement on "Special and Differential Treatment" offered developing countries the option to limit agriculture imports more than is currently allowed under the Agreement on Agriculture.
But the two mini-ministerial WTO meetings in Sydney -- November, 2002 -- and Tokyo -- February, 2003, that were supposed to help consolidate the progress made in Doha, ended in failure. Industrially developed countries, says India, have already declined to reduce the tariffs on industrial goods like leather, footwear, electronic goods, textiles, gems and jewellery and have continued to deny increased market access in the case of agricultural goods.
India also complains that developed countries have declined to reduce agricultural subsidies for fear of protests from farmers who wield enormous influence, especially in the European Union. They are also not opening up their market in services. "In fact, they are busy now imposing stricter visa restrictions on guest information technology workers from developing countries," says an official in the ministry.
"Moreover, since many of the industrially developed countries are facing growing unemployment and recessionary conditions, their commitment to honor the pledges made in Doha is likely to remain lukewarm."
That means the Cancun meeting could possibly end up as just "a nice holiday by the sea", as described by Rafidah Aziz, the Malaysian Trade Minister. Worse, some analysts, including those who do not belong to India also fear that the meeting could turn into a repeat of WTO's Seattle conclave three years ago, when negotiations collapsed amidst bitter fights, as protesters battled police in the city's streets.
Yet, minister Jaitely said recently that he would pursue India's objectives relentlessly: because, after all, there is lots at stake. What happens in Cancun in September will determine the course of the world's $6 trillion annual trade and, of course, India's own minuscule trade of $46 billion a year, which the country wishes to double in the next three years.
"It must be recognized there are political pressures within developing countries arising out of failure to meet deadlines," Jaitley said at the ministerial council meeting recently. "We will have to recover lost ground to some extent if these issues are to be addressed and resolved before Cancun. The need of the hour is a strong message from the developed world represented by the OECD that the development focus of the Doha Agenda is very much intact."
According to ministry officials a brand new and "potentially hot" agenda also features in Jaitely's list. He is expected to seek flexibility and transparency in visa rules of WTO members for professionals in computer and related activities. India has wished that developed countries particularly the U.S., and the European Union, should agree to issue short-term visas at short notice for greater mobility to those countries for the country's visa-holders (read IT professionals).
In a paper submitted by India along with 24 other member countries to WTO recently, the country, reportedly, has already requested the Organization to take up the removal of restrictions recently imposed by a few "leading nations" (read U.S., UK and Germany) on the number of professionals from information technology and related sectors going abroad. It has also requested that WTO should ensure professionals from other countries should not be subjected to social security levies since these benefits do not accrue to them in the host country.
"There is a need to put in place a mechanism that ensures speed and flexibility for movement of professionals. Otherwise, it does not make sense for us to undertake too many commitments," a commerce ministry official said.
However, according to some experts, the real problem for India lies not in how talks in Cancun proceed, if at all. For India, it lies somewhere else: "The real problem for Jaitely as he prepares for Cancun is not what to talk about; it is how to deal with a changed world environment in trade, economy, politics and international relations," said Sushma Chandran, a trade analyst.
