But backtracking from commitments already made would have entailed too stiff a price. Nevertheless, the occasion should call for some rethinking on the country's stance in negotiations during the next review of the WTO agreements.

We have for too long relied too much on either intellectual argument or on humanitarian posturing in our dealings with the world. Indira Gandhi's message to the World Health Assembly at Geneva in 1982 summed up this kind of approach when she said, "The idea of a better ordered world is one in which medical discoveries will be free of patents and there will be no profiteering from life and death."

Theworld has moved on since those words were spoken, and holier-than-thou attitudes such as these spark only irritation. At the same time, there is no need to go to the other extreme and fall for textbook free market proselytising. A more hard-headed and practical approach to the whole problem is needed.

First and foremost, we must make a detailed study of the manner in which our obligations under the WTO agreements will hit our industry. In areas where we can develop competitiveness, we must work out a strategy where industry will be given some time to learn to walk by themselves without support. If unviable companies and perhaps even entire industries have to be closed down, provision must be made for the workers affected.

Unfortunately, we have so far had no concrete action and precious few plans to deal with the fallout of liberalisation. So far as trade negotiations are concerned, we must arm ourselves beforehand with a strategy. The reported move to impose non-tariff barriers on steel imports is a casein point.

Concessions can later on be allowed on such NTBs, in exchange for other benefits. We must also be willing to link issues -- such as the West's demands for labour standards with free labour movement between countries; or link the demands against subsidies to the entire issue of defence-related subsidies in the US to companies such as Boeing.

And more fundamentally, the global currency crisis should lead to an examination of the need for temporary protection to industries affected by severe depreciations in competitors' currencies.