Minister Sharma explains India's position on food security

At the Bali Ministerial Conference, India led the developing-country drive to change the current WTO rules to safeguard food security. Kanaga Raja reports on a media briefing by India's Commerce and Industry Minister on the issue.

---

INDIAN Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma on 5 December during the Bali Ministerial Conference reiterated his country's position on the issue of food security.

At a media briefing in a packed room, Sharma said that India had been engaged in the ongoing negotiations for many months in Geneva with all sincerity and in the most constructive manner.

India had made an acknowledged contribution in taking forward not only the agenda for this meeting in Geneva but also on all the three pillars on which negotiations were going on to arrive at a solution which was acceptable (and) which embraced all, he added.

'We live in a world where countries have different levels of development and their challenges differ from nation to nation and continent to continent but the vast majority of the world lives in poor countries, in developing countries, in Asia, in Africa, in South America and the Caribbean.'

'It is a fact that those engaged in agriculture in these countries happen to be resource-poor and subsistence farmers,' he said.

In agriculture, technologies in many of the poor countries - not in India - may not be as are available for farming in many of the developed countries. When talking about a country like India, 'we talk on behalf of similarly placed countries whom I will refer to as our partners in this coalition of countries which are developing countries which have a challenge of food security; countries which have the issues concerning the subsistence farmers.'

'This is one issue which we thought should be and needs to be addressed so that past distortions can be corrected by putting in place through consensus a negotiated agreement which allays the apprehensions of the developing countries and the poor countries particularly with regard to their vulnerability to archaic rules or dated rules,' he said.

Non-negotiable right

As India had maintained throughout, the right to food security was non-negotiable, Sharma stressed. This was a right which the United Nations recognised, and that was why the UN had a Special Rapporteur on hunger and food security (Olivier De Schutter), and reports on hunger and food security issues were regularly presented to the UN.

'We also have a commitment to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The countries which are represented in the WTO are also signatories [and] have also made commitments to the MDGs, as well as to the right to food. Therefore, any decision which we make while putting in place the agreements, particularly in agriculture, on food security [has] to be in harmony with the MDGs and the right to food security, [and] cannot and must not be in conflict with these noble goals of the global community as a whole.'

This was a principled position for India and it should not be misinterpreted as India entering into a dispute. 'We have urged with respect all members to consider this aspect so that the decisions that we make resonate in the poor and developing countries where people are genuinely concerned as to what will emerge out of Bali.'

In India, there was a food security programme, and the public stockholding for food security was the proposal which was under discussion.

Sharma underlined that out of the 10 draft texts that were negotiated in Geneva, India had endorsed eight. 'This is just to underscore that India is as much committed as any other nation to have a successful outcome in Bali.' But at the same time there were issues on trade facilitation where some countries like India may be required to change their domestic laws, and countries found it difficult to make those commitments.

The crunch was the issue of public stockholding for food security, he said.

He then went on to explain the manner in which the issue of food security was addressed under the WTO rules. He said that countries were allowed to have public stockholding and public procurement but there was a threshold called the de minimis. This was linked to the past Uruguay Round agreement, and for the calculation of de minimis, the reference prices used were of 1986-88. So, in 2013, all countries had to calculate the de minimis for the eligible procurement based on 1986-88 prices!

'We have been pleading that these prices need to be updated,' he said, adding that the last agreement (Uruguay Round) was a flawed agreement - it had an inherent imbalance loaded against the developing and poor countries.

Pointing out that most countries had seen an escalation of prices in 2013, Sharma said: 'If anybody says that the food prices have not changed in the last three decades, I most respectfully would strongly disagree with that.'

He explained that what India procured was from the subsistence farmers. It was only a limited percentage of the food grain that was produced by the farmers or the different staple foods which were procured to feed the poor. It was procured at a Minimum Support Price (MSP), which was not the income support or market support that developed countries had been practising for decades.

And what was procured was distributed as part of food security - until recently it was through the public distribution system - where subsidised food grain was made available to the poor so that they did not go to bed hungry.

The Indian parliament had enacted a food security act. It was a legal entitlement given to citizens - over 700 million Indian citizens were poor and legally entitled - and the government was obliged to ensure that the prescribed notified quantity of food per month was made available as per their entitlement.

'We cannot possibly be expected to negotiate something which is in direct conflict with our food security,' the Indian minister stressed.

India was not the only country which gave MSP to its farmers. A large number of countries had similar programmes. At least 15-odd countries, if not more, had notified schemes for food security and public procurement.

'We have been discussing a number of possible options so that we come, while negotiating these things, to the second decade of the 21st century and not be held hostage to the 1980s.'

Sharma further said that India had been talking to various groups, its coalition partners and various stakeholders. It had had a number of negotiations with the EU, the US and also with the African and ACP (African, Caribbean and Pacific) groups and the LDCs.

He noted that in the past when there had been a shared concern over the stalemate in the Doha Round of negotiations, it was India which took the initiative and he had the honour of hosting ministers and leaders in New Delhi in September 2009 with an effort and objective to re-energise the stalled talks and it did help as the negotiators returned to Geneva.

'India is for the strengthening of the multilateral trading system. India stands for the strengthening of the WTO. We are for a rule-based multilateral trade system which corrects historical distortions, which is fair, which is just, which is equitable.'

Stacked against the poor

Responding to a question, Sharma said that the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) reached in the Uruguay Round was 'inherently flawed and unfairly balanced' against the poor in developing countries, hence 'the ongoing negotiations, that's why we want this calculation to be not dated but updated and to be brought to the 21st century'.

Sharma was also asked whether India would be worse off if there was no deal in Bali as it risked being challenged at the WTO. To this, he responded, 'Why are we having any negotiations then? The same would apply then also to trade facilitation. Why do we have a multilateral trading organisation and should we have decisions frozen in time?'

'We're negotiating because the food prices have gone up ... We're negotiating because [of] the legal entitlement to food security. This is primarily a sovereign right and a sovereign space. But as a responsible nation, as a rule-based and rule-governed democracy, we are discussing this G33 proposal [on public stockholding for food security] so that the rules as such and the agreements of the multilateral trade organisation are connected with the realities on the ground of the 21st century.'

Unlike rich countries, he said, 'our agriculture is primarily rain-fed' and agricultural holdings of Indian farmers were on average of 1.2 acres of land in a nation of 1.25 billion people.

Asked if, politically speaking, his position was related to the upcoming Indian election, Sharma said he thought that this again was a 'misperception'. Democracies did have elections, but they also had principles and convictions.

He said that the proposal on food security emanated from the WTO's Hong Kong Ministerial Conference of 2005. India had not suddenly remembered that there were going to be elections and 'pulled a rabbit out of the hat'. This was an eight-year-old proposal which had been discussed, rediscussed, negotiated and renegotiated many times. The G33 had shown flexibility and lowered the ambition just to ensure there was a consensus. It was the unbracketed portion, the consensus position, in the 2008 revised fourth draft on agriculture - this meant that it was the settled part of the AoA as on December 2008. 'And people must respect what was accepted after negotiations in the year 2008.'

In response to a question about the texts on the table, Sharma asked that, when out of 10 texts, India had endorsed eight and was willing even to negotiate the outstanding issues on trade facilitation, 'can we barter away or compromise when it comes to a fundamental right to food security?'

'I would like to make this absolutely clear that we have not come here as petitioners to beg for a peace clause ... That it is binding on us to accept 1986 to 1988 prices and make ourselves vulnerable to disputes and calculations? The answer is a firm "NO". This is a fundamental issue, we will never compromise.'

He said he found it very amusing that a country which was standing up for a right acknowledged by the UN and the MDGs, 'should be blamed for speaking for the right to food security for hundreds of millions, or rather billions, of poor people on this planet. We are not in conflict. We are urging not for a compromise but for a consensus on this fundamental issue.'

To another question, the Indian minister said that there would not be a collapse and that the WTO would survive. There had been past meetings without any result. 'We did not come here to collapse any meeting. India is committed to a positive outcome in Bali. India is committed, but also to a balanced and fair outcome.'

On public stockholding for food security, Sharma said there had to be a fair and balanced agreement. 'It is better to have no agreement than a bad agreement.'

In response to a question, Sharma said that India had a public procurement of food grains using public funds for stockholding for distribution among the people entitled to food security. The stocks procured using this public money could not be given to trade for export purposes.

Replying to another question, he said that both Pakistan and India exported rice. But for basmati rice (that India exports), there was no public procurement. That was high-quality rice which was never procured for food security or public distribution in a subsidised manner.

Asked if India was alone, Sharma said that the countries that had stood up and spoken were all big countries with huge populations, and in that context, it may be more than 75% of the world's population who stood by India on this issue.

Asked about the interim arrangement and it being linked to a permanent solution, he said that India never sought a 'peace clause'. It was being erroneously referred to as one. On the interim solution, he said that his understanding of the English language was that 'interim' was meant for the present, for the intervening period until the permanent was put in place. There was no dictionary meaning which described 'interim' as 'temporary'. Interim was interim until the permanent was put in place.

The WTO Director-General's draft made it clear that the parties would commit to engage in negotiations for a permanent solution. But all that India and other countries were saying was that this was a must-have for them.

'We're only saying how can there be a "sunset clause" when you have binding commitments in trade facilitation and "interim" is described as four years ... I cannot accept this as a new dictionary meaning of the word "interim",' said Sharma.                        

This article is reproduced from the South-North Development Monitor (SUNS, No. 7712, 6 December 2013).

*Third World Resurgence No. 281/282, January/February 2014, pp 30-32