Wide breadth, but no depth

World Trade Organisation by P K Vasudeva is for beginners, not for people familiar with its nuances

by Shefali Misra

THE state of awareness about the World Trade Organisation (WTO) among Indian business, even six years after the organisation came into being, and years since India began implementing various Uruguay Round agreements, is truly alarming. Even up to two or three years ago, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) was still putting out booklets titled ‘What is the WTO?’ For God’s sake! An entire industry which claims to feel severely threatened by the organisation and which, at the very least, owes the loss of effectiveness of much of its domestic lobbying with government to it, can surely do better.

The refrain is repeated elsewhere. A senior Clinton-administration official, who recently travelled in much of North India was heard to observe how disconcerted he was by the utter misinformation that was rampant about various WTO agreements and what they entailed for India.

This is truly alarming for a country which, under various WTO obligations, has in the recent past effected truly radical policy changes. These range from, most recently, to the removal of all physical restrictions on imports to putting in place a mechanism that would enable India to recognise product patents most importantly for drugs, and so on. The importance for firms of such sweeping changes will not be lost on a fool. Mr P K Vasudeva’s World Trade Organisation: Global Business Policies attempts to make their lives somewhat easier by providing a handy little ready reckoner, which makes up in its practical-use value what it certainly lacks in elegance or claims to a perspective.

This book is no use whatsoever to anyone who claims good familiarity with the multilateral trade regime as it has evolved since after World War II to date. For the rest, and especially for businesses—which look plain silly even asking aloud for information that they should have on their fingertips by now—it is handy. It is nothing more but, importantly, nothing less.

Don’t read this book for any great perspective on the eternal Indian debate on how good or bad the WTO is for India, etc. If, however, words, abbreviations and acronyms such as ATC (Agreement on Textiles and Clothing), Trips (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) and casual references to things like ‘the Seattle ministerial’ leave you scratching your head, check it out.

The fundamental merit of this book is its relatively up-to-date nature, the breadth though hardly the depth of its scope, and the connections it makes. Most books on the WTO pretty much stop at outlining the various agreements these incorporate. This one can be helpful to those who had pretty much followed matters until the signing of the Uruguay Round Final Act into the Marrakesh Agreement of April 1994. It provides a good update on what new issues have figured prominently on the world trade agenda since then and the general orientation of multilateral trade since then. In fact, it offers fairly specific, sometimes even arcane, details of various groups’ positions in the run-up to the crucial Seattle meeting in December 1999, which however, ended in failure.

It also makes connections between the WTO agreements and their links to other international treaties that impinge on these agreements. Thus, for example, there is a little something on the Patent Convention Treaty to which India became a signatory some years ago, and a good amount of detail on the whole patent process. It is useful in trying to understand how a country (which is also a signatory to the WTO Trips agreement), and its companies, can derive benefits in terms of the filing of patent applications, etc.

Finally, this little book pays attention to India’s Exim policy in the post-WTO-agreement years.
For Indian businessmen with scanty knowledge of deep policy matters, this is a practical little handbook which should also furnish some good ideas about what business practices will stand them in good stead. For those with the faintest scholarly inclinations, it is best left alone.

World Trade Organisation: Global Business Policies by P K Vasudeva; Minerva Press; Rs 500; Pp 245