'The main issue was livelihood of millions of poor farmers'

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: Despite being nearly isolated in the select group of ministers from seven countries—India, Brazil, China, Japan, Australia, the European Union and the US—chosen by World Trade Organisation (WTO) director general Pascal Lamy to clinch a global trade deal, commerce and industry minister Kamal Nath stood his ground and did not yield to the pressures of the rich countries, especially the US, to compromise on protection of the livelihood concerns of poor farmers in developing countries. Talking to Arun S of FE, Nath discussed the reasons for the collapse of the WTO talks in detail. He also said positions of the US were dictated by commercial considerations and that he did not want any trade off at the cost of the livelihood security of the poor.

What was the main reason for the collapse of the ministerial-level talks at the Doha Development Round of the WTO?

The main issue was the security of livelihood of millions of poor farmers in India and other developing countries against import surges which could take place.

The special safeguard mechanism (or SSM) enabling developing countries like India to impose additional duties to protect the livelihood of its poor farmers from import surges and price declines of sensitive agricultural products was agreed in Hong Kong (Ministerial Declaration adopted in December 2005), and in the Framework Agreement (of the WTO agreed in August 2004).

But the proposal on the table was frustrating the operationalisation of SSM. Developed countries and those with huge farm export interests wanted SSM to become effective only at a higher rate of import surge so that their interests were not hurt. I was not going to accept this proposal.

There was no question of trading off commercial interests with livelihood security. Developed countries must, in fact, reach out to the poorest and undeveloped countries. India has 300 million people living on less than a dollar a day and 700 million people at $2 a day.