Trading charges

If the WTO becomes a club not worth being a member of, it would be because — as our columnist explains — the trade body simply can’t guarantee enough liberalisation. Commerce Minister Kamal Nath, we are pretty sure, broadly agrees with that reformist sentiment. Yet his statements after the recent failure of trade talks have suggested just the opposite to India’s politicians on the Left and the Right. Marxists and swadeshis have been forever arguing India should walk out of the WTO. This has been the silliest of political positions in a country full of silliness when it comes to politicians talking economics.

Responsible nations don’t leave rule-setting multilateral bodies. And India is no helpless third world country in WTO. Along with Brazil, South Africa and China, it is part of a non-Western negotiation group the West takes seriously, even if it doesn’t like it. Kamal Nath’s aggressively voiced despair, in fact, reflects this relative strength: India can loudly express its dissatisfaction knowing that its strategic alliance with other big emerging economies ensure that when talks restart — as they will — its rhetoric will be read as a sign of hard bargaining.

The commerce minister should arguably have clarified his position a little better. It is necessary that our politicians understand that WTO is not why India reforms, but it is because India reformed that it is now a player in WTO. A political consensus is useful because India and its allies have to take on Europe and America’s hypocrisy on farm subsidies. Cut through all the jargon and lawyerly nitpicking in trade talks, and one thing remains: the West has to stop subverting the world market for farm goods. This needs consistent and ferocious arguments from major emerging economies. It also perhaps calls for a rethink on WTO decision-making processes — there could be a sort of a security council, but bigger in size, of trade diplomacy, with the West and major non-Western countries formally represented. India, whether the majority of its political class likes it or not, will be an obvious choice as a member.