The Indian government hosted the meeting of 35 Trade Ministers representing key WTO members and their coalitions on September 3-4 2009 in New Delhi to apparently sort out the contradictions that led to the collapse of the previous round of talks last year, and to lay the ground for resumptions of negotiations. The Indian government’s initiative in resuscitating the talks has attracted worldwide attention.  It reflects the increasingly dominant role sought to be played by the Indian bourgeoisie in world trade and economic forums, corresponding to its imperialist pursuit of big power status in global affairs.

However, the 50,000 peasants who converged on New Delhi on September 4, to protest the resumption of the WTO talks, clearly expressed their view that this initiative of the Manmohan Singh government was not in their interest. Anand Sharma, the Minister for Commerce and Industry, simply declared that “we will not compromise Indian agriculture”!  This did not convince the peasants whose very livelihood has been under threat by the WTO agreements. The “Indian agriculture” that the Minister was referring to is that of the growing corporate interest in the sector and not that of the millions of small peasants.

The previous trade talks of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) held in Geneva on July 21-31 2008, collapsed on the penultimate day for lack of agreement on issues that have plagued the Doha Round since its very beginning. These are the issues of subsidies and Special Safeguards Mechanism (SSM), i.e. the extent to which countries would be able to protect domestic producers from import surges through “safeguard mechanisms.”  The SSMs are meant to allow such countries to raise their tariffs in the face of import surges over a certain specified level. However, there was no agreement on the level of imports when the SSMs could be enabled. Likewise, there were unresolved differences over tariffs in industry and negotiations on services.

The reason for the differences has been that each of the capitalist governments wants to wrest the maximum advantage for its own bourgeoisie, while giving away the minimum, whether on agriculture, industry or services. Since each country or group of countries is competing for the world’s markets and there is much at stake for the corporate interests they are defending, there is intense contradiction and competition. And yet all the country representatives talk ad nauseum about the need for a “rule based, fair and equitable global multi-lateral trading regime which has development as its core objective.”

Global trade is dominated by giant capitalist corporations, who have gained the most from lowering of tariff and other barriers. The millions of small farmers and peasants are extremely vulnerable to the fluctuations in commodity prices. They benefit very little when commodity prices rise but are hit very badly when they crash. Trade liberalisation along with expansion of commodity futures markets has exposed small farmers and peasants to extreme volatility and insecurity of livelihood. Millions of them have been wiped out.

Today, the global economic recession has shrunk the market and capitalists of each country are looking to expand the space for their exports. India is seeking to take initiative on many world-level issues in order to expand the external market for investments and exports by Indian capitalist corporations. In the course of his recent speech when announcing the country’s Foreign Trade Policy 2009-14, Sharma mentioned that “some countries have resorted to protectionist measures posing barrier to free trade.” This shows that India is acting as a major power that wants to gain from further opening up trade, not a country wanting to protect its small producers.

Till date, neither the Congress Party nor the BJP, while in power, has explained how the WTO regime is in the interests of the majority of Indian people, who are workers and peasants. The back-room manner in which the WTO negotiations have been conducted and agreements have been signed has provoked strong opposition in India. The times are calling on the workers and peasants to further strengthen their unity against the liberalisation program and mount a powerful resistance to the imperialist drive of the bourgeoisie.