The picture perfect villages around Evian, in the countryside around the French village as well as across the water in Switzerland, are the stuff of glossy travel brochures that middle-class India often gets into a feeding frenzy about. But there’s a worm in the beautiful apple, called ‘‘state agricultural subsidies,’’ led by none other than the European Union — and within the EU by France — and it’s spreading its poison by distorting the free flow of trade worldwide. Seeking to inject a dose of realism on behalf of the developing world, Prime Minister Vajpayee in his maiden speech at the ‘‘enlarged dialogue of the G-8,’’ today called for the ‘‘phase-out of (such) trade distorting agricultural subsidies and removal of barriers to agricultural exports, while ensuring the livelihood security of billions of farmers in developing countries.’’ The Prime Minister arrived here this afternoon to a personal welcome by French president Jacques Chirac, at whose initiative the first such dialogue with 22 countries of the developing world is taking place at Evian. But with Canadian prime minister Jean Chretien sitting on his left at the working lunch and Saudi Crown Prince Abdudllah sitting on his right, Vajpayee is said to have used the opportunity to also do some plain speaking with his interlocutors. In his speech, Vajpayee also called for the removal of visa and non-visa obstructions for the movement of labour worldwide, as well as broader access of developing countries to pharmaceuticals, saying that this was anathema to the spirit of free trade. Analysts have pointed out that India had suffered immensely by major visa restrictions slapped on its labour exports, whether to the Gulf or to developed countries in the West. The PM’s intervention this afternoon at Evian, France, is said to have caused some raised eyebrows among the developed world, which has for the longest time kept the exclusivity of the G-8 to itself. Thirteen years after the break-up of the Soviet Union, the G-8 formally admitted Russia into its chamber at this meeting. Vajpayee’s comments, a reiteration of the remarks made by then Commerce minister Murasoli Maran at the Doha Round in 2001, may be seen by some as a vindication of US trade policies. Washington called for greater trade flows as well as a deepening of the WTO’s reform agenda during the Millenium round. But before economic analysts believe that India is determined to ride off into the sunset with the US — and point to the signs at St. Petersburg yesterday when George Bush and Atal Behari Vajpayee sat cheek by jowl together at Vladimir Putin’s high table — here’s a second look at the PM’s comments. Vajpayee also lashed out at the so-called Tobin tax that developed countries have sought to impose on financial flows to developing countries. ‘‘I believe the time has come for us to seriously consider the idea of a small levy on international capital flows, to be credited to funds for global development. This would both dampen volatile capital movements and generate appreciable resources for development,’’ he said. Straddling the economic divide between the developed and the developing world, the PM called for a careful consideration of Tony Blair’s International Finance Facility as well as the Asian Bonds initiative of Thai Prime Minister Shinawatra. ‘‘Both are forms of guarantee systems to make capital available for developmental projects,’’ he said. But analysts pointed out that India could not have its cake and eat it too. That it could not criticise the western world for keeping its agricultural subsidies and not open up its own sectors to the worldwide financial system.
