WTO and the Economic and Constitutional Dimensions of Food Security in India

Recently I had the opportunity to present my research paper on the "Economic and Constitutional Dimensions of Food Security in the Context of Negotiations on Agriculture Under the World Trade Organisation".

The conclusions of my research were presented at the "International Conference on Agro Biodiversity and 20 Years of WTO" in Chennai, India.

In a nutshell, I had concluded that the Agreement on Agriculture is anti-poor and anti-farmer and that the Government of India should desist from becoming a signatory to the Agreement under the WTO without substantive changes to the current draft, if only to protect the interests of the downtrodden and under-privileged sections of our country.

The full text of my research paper is at the link HERE.

WTO's Agreement on Agriculture is Anti-Poor and Anti-Farmer

Recently I presented a research paper (available at the link here) at an International Conference on Agro Biodiversity and WTO. The paper explored the validity of objections of the International Community against India's National Food Security Act, 2013. It concluded that India should not succumb to international pressure and accept the terms in the Agreement of Agriculture (AOA). 

A brief summary of the paper is below.

The right to life (and dignity associated with it) is the most sacred of the fundamental rights bestowed upon people by the Constitution of India. In order to protect those rights, the Indian government has the duties of poverty eradication and hunger mitigation cast on it. These same rights are also incorporated in the Charter of United Nations and various other international covenants and declarations. 

Various food-grain procurement and distribution schemes of the government are aimed at safeguarding these rights. However, many other countries view these policies as trade distorting. Their contention is that the minimum support price mechanisms enable Indian farmers to undercut in international grain markets.  

That bogey of trade-distortion is an untenable argument. It is unfounded in reality. 

To begin with, any World Trade Organisation (WTO) measure under the Agreement of Agriculture (AOA) imposing restrictions on the supply of subsidized food-grains would grossly violate the constitutional rights of the people of India. Besides, it transgresses various provisions of international law under the United Nations too. Neither economic principles nor research findings support the imposition of such curbs.  

Hence, the Indian government must desist from accepting any restrictions on public intervention in the food-grain market and the maintenance of buffer-stocks. Perhaps the best and only solution is to treat minimum support prices (MSP), public-procurement, buffer-stocks and subsidies as Green Box measures, so long as food-grains procured under such government schemes are not internationally traded.

The Indian government must not succumb to international pressure and impose either curbs on the MSP mechanism or curtail the existing public distribution system (PDS).