Stop Being Defensive In WTO, Says TN Srinivasan

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: T N Srinivasan, Professor of Economics at Yale University, USA, writing exclusively for FE says, ‘‘We should aspire to be viewed by the rest of the world as an economy from which it can buy a range of quality products at competitive prices, and to which it can sell its products in a stable market and policy environment with few barriers”

1. Introduction
The Doha round of multilateral trade negotiations is at a critical juncture. The Fifth Ministerial Conference (MC) of the World Trade Organization (WTO) for a midterm review of the negotiations will open in Cancún, Mexico on September 10. There is no consensus draft of the ministerial declaration, and several crucial deadlines have passed without any agreement. A collapse of the Cancún MC would be severe setback to the goal of a rule-based, liberal global trading system. India has a lot to lose if the Cancún Ministerial collapses. By abandoning its defensive posture and becoming an enthusiastically active participant, it can play a major role in preventing a collapse.

We should offer proposals of our own that further our interests rather than merely reacting to others. Offering little in exchange while asking a lot of others is a sure way of becoming a marginal player with negligible influence on the outcome of negotiations. Since unilaterally opening our markets to international competition is in our own interest regardless of whether our access to markets of others is enhanced, getting such enhanced access in return in negotiations is a bonus. India's defensive posture is longstanding. At the Punta Del Este (Uruguay) MC which launched the Uruguay Round, we fancied ourselves leaders of deve- loping countries and formed, along with Brazil, a group of ten like-minded countries (GT).

The GT were not convinced of the need for a new round of negotiations to begin with, let alone the inclusion in the negotiating agenda of new issues such as services, intellectual property and investment measures. As the MC wore on, the GT position eroded, and all but India and a wavering Brazil abandoned their opposition. Brazil also eventually dropped out. Having reached this untenable position, we concluded a last-minute, face-saving agreement with the US that service negotiations would take place separately and acquiesced in the launching of the Uruguay Round.