Of the three substances listed for PIC at the fourth meeting of the Conference of Parties (cop-4) to the Rotterdam Convention, only tributyltin was listed at the meeting held from October 27 to 31 in Rome. While seven countries opposed asbestos from being blacklisted, in case of endosulfan only India was responsible for its exclusion.

“India was put in a spot when country after country joined in accusing it for its entrenched position of not allowing the listing of endosulfan, a highly toxic pesticide,”

said Madhumita Dutta of Chennai-based advocacy group The Other Media.
Kerala, where endosulfan killed hundreds of people before being banned in 2002, passed a resolution on November 5 demanding that India retract its statement at Rotterdam Convention. Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan said India should ban the use of the pesticide. State agriculture minister Mullakkara Ratnakaran said he was surprised the Centre did not find evidence to ban it. “We have given them enough social and statistical evidence and data provided by the Kerala Agricultural Univerisity,” Ratnakaran said.

Sruthi, a young girl of Padre village in Kerala’s Kasargod district, was born with stag-horn limbs, an ugly result of 25 years of spraying endosulfan on cashew plantations. Sixty-something Mangabhai Patel was exposed to asbestos for over 25 years at the Ahmedabad Electricity Authority in Gandhinagar before being diagnosed with asbestosis, a chronic respiratory disease. Both are unaware of the meeting that took place miles away to discuss the hazardous substances they and thousands like them are victims of.

“In case of chrysotile asbestos, not a single country which opposed the inclusion has any objection to the scientific process or document. They all opposed it politically,”

said Datta. The countries that opposed the inclusion of asbestos were India, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan Republic, Kazakhstan, Vietnam, Ukraine and the Philippines. The Indian delegation, led by environment and forests ministry officials, said it was tough to decide on asbestos because the study on it by the

National Institute of Occupational Health was still under way. “The Indian delegation acted under pressure from representatives of the chrysotile asbestos and the chemical industry,” said Gopal Krishna of Ban As-bestos Network of India, a group of health, environment and labour activists.

The trade talks at the World Trade Organization headquarters in Geneva collapsed in the last week of July. The Union minister for Commerce, Kamal Nath, said India would not accede to the demands of developed countries at the cost of Indian farmers. Nath seems to have become a hero in many quarters in the country and in other developing countries—and a villain amongst developed countries for allegedly scuttling free trade negotiations. But in reality, he has virtually complied with all conditions of the wto agriculture text, including almost zero farm subsidy reduction by developed countries. And the talks actually collapsed because the us did not want to make any commitment to cut massive subsidies to cotton growers.

India had three main demands before the commencement of the meet. It wanted reduction in subsidies to farmers in developed countries and increase in the number of special products—items on which developing countries have flexibility to raise import tariff because these items are important for food, livelihood security and rural development. India also wanted a simplified Special Safeguard Mechanism (ssm) that would allow developing countries to raise tariffs to protect farmers from surging imports. But at Geneva, India did not raise the first two issues at all. The issue of ssm was stonewalled by the us.

The real spoilsport

On the eighth day of the ministerial, the European Union brokered a proposal on ssms. The proposal said that developing countries could hike import duties/ tariffs to any level, if they could prove, in 60 days, that glut in imports or fall in prices of imported goods is inimical to domestic livelihoods, food security and rural development. The draft circulated before the meet talked of limits on hikes in import duties.

Six of the G-7 countries including China and India agreed to the proposal but the us blocked it. US trade representative Susan Schwab said ssms in the present form “were very protective for developing countries and could not be accepted”.

“This was an excuse because if all countries had agreed to the us proposal, the next issue on the agenda would have been cotton subsidies which the us wanted to evade”

said Bhaskar Goswami of the Delhi-based think tank Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security.

“In 2007, the us doles out three billion dollars as cotton subsidy. This came down to one billion in 2008 because 38 per cent of land under cotton had been diverted to corn and other bio-fuel crops. At Geneva, the us would have been asked to cut down the subsidy by 70 per cent and that would have created trouble in an election year,” Goswami explained.

The us has already lost a wto dispute on cotton subsidies. “In 2003, it was criticized for protecting its 20,000 cotton growers impoverishing millions of cotton growers in the four African countries—Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali and Chad. The impact has been also borne by Indian cotton farmers who were priced out and committed suicide under pressure of heavy loans,” said Devinder Sharma who is also affiliated with the same think tank.

Withdraw

Meanwhile, farm movements in India are demanding complete exclusion of agriculture from WTO talks.

“Developed countries want to protect their agriculture though heavy subsidies and high tariff barriers and at the same time want access for their products in the developing countries. There can be no agreement unless the developed world drastically changes its attitude. So we believe that wto has become ineffective and needs to be wind up,”

said Krishan Bir Chaudhary, the president of the nationwide farmers’ organization Bharat Krishak Samaj.

“Free market will only lead to more suicides. We have to be completely self-reliant in agriculture and food and not accede to the will of multi-national companies,” said Chukki Nanjunda swamy of another farmers’ organization Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha, a farm organization.

The fact that wto director general Pascal Lamy has cut short his autumn break and is visiting India on August 10-12 and the us soon after shows how desperate he is to conclude the Doha Development Round which began in 2001. The talks might restart in September.

Farmers’ associations all over India were holding protests demanding exclusion of agriculture as an agenda in the World Trade Organization (wto) talks, even as the organization’s mini-ministerial debated ways to secure “meaningful market access in agriculture, manufacturing and services”. At the time this magazine went to press, farmers’ groups were apprehensive that the Union minister for commerce might sign a deal at this meet in Geneva allowing the entry of cheap agricultural products from the developed world. “That would be the last nail in the coffin of small farming in India,” said Sheelu Francis of the Tamil Nadu Women’s Collective, an organization representing over a lakh agriculture workers in the state.

The draft for negotiations for the Geneva ministerial—the third draft on the matter—did not accede to most demands of developing countries, the principal one being substantial cuts in subsidies offered to farmers in the us and European Union. These subsidies end up lowering prices of agricultural products in the developed countries below the production cost of farmers in developing countries, giving the former unfair market advantage.

At the time this magazine went to press, the us had made an offer to reduce its permissible subsidies to US $ 15 billion—it had offered 16.4 billion last year. Washington is currently allowed to distribute more than US $48 billion in subsidies under wto’s agreement on agriculture, yes, US $48 billion. But the actual subsidies given to farmers in the us are only about US $7 billion. So the subsidy proposed at Geneva actually gives us the leeway to increase its actual subsidies—not an unlikely possibility given the recent hike in food prices.

There were more strings. The developing countries have to facilitate non-agricultural product market access. Union commerce minister Kamal Nath is not totally averse to the idea. But he also added,

“I hope the proposed subsidy cut is only their opening gambit and not their bottom-line. The subsidy cut really makes no substantial impact.”

“The Prime Minister thinks we should close this issue but unless India’s interests are met, we should not move forward,” Nath said on July 17 before leaving for Geneva. This statement has made farmers’ movements apprehensive that India might end up signing the agreement on agriculture at the mini-ministerial without any major changes.

“The minister seems keen to sign the Doha agreement of the wto when he says that it should be finalized soon. This when the Indian government knows that the us Farms’ Bill, 2008, promises up to us $ 307 billion in subsidies to farmers over the next five years,”

says Yudhveer Singh of the Indian Coordination Committee of Farmers’ Movement, New Delhi.

The Geneva meet is the latest in the Doha Round of wto negotiations—named after the venue of its first meet. The talks, which began in the Qatari capital in 2001, aim to slash subsidies and other barriers to trade “to help reduce poverty and spur economic growth in developing countries”.

According to wto’s categories, there are three kinds of subsidies of which only one is considered to distort production and trade, the Amber Box. With developing countries pressuring the developed countries to cut down on Amber Box subsidies, many subsidies have been move to the Green Box category—deemed as not trade distorting—and the Blue Box—trade distorting but permitted with certain conditions. Over 80 per cent subsidies are in the green and the blue box.

Singh put the reclassification in perspective.

“I asked farmers in Switzerland, if subsidies were cut down there. I was told that the same subsidy that was being given in the name of agriculture yesterday, comes in the name of environment now,”

he said. Bhaskar Goswami of the Delhi-based collective of scientists, policy makers and farmers, Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security offered further explanation.

“Countries are allowed to dole out subsidies to their farmers for food security. This is a Green Box subsidy. The us and the eu give out subsidies for cereals, oilseeds and pulses in the name of food security. But 60 per cent of all this is fed to dairy animals. So a subsidy given in the name of food security becomes trade distorting,”

he said.The latest text talks about disciplining such Green Box subsidies. “But there are no specifics as to how they will be disciplined. So this seems to be hogwash,” Goswami said.

In fact, if the draft for the Geneva ministerial is an indicator, some pro-developing country mechanisms of the wto could be on their way out. Amongst them is Special Safeguards Mechanism (ssms), which allows developing countries to protect their producers from losing out to imported products. Whenever a developing country faces a sudden surge in imports or a depression in domestic price beyond a given threshold, it can invoke ssms and slap additional import duties to protect its market. The new text, however, mentions that the tariff allowed under ssm cannot exceed the pre-Doha round level—they were very low then. Even Nath expressed disappointment at the new ssm rules in Geneva. “Are we expected to stand by, see a surge in imports and do nothing?” he asked in his speech on July 23. Negotiations were on when this magazine went to press.

India is the leading exporter of guar gum, constituting about 80 per cent of the global production. It is being exported to other countries since 1956. Guar gum is derived from guar seeds (cluster beans), a legume crop that grows in semi-arid regions of the subcontinent. It is used as a thickening agent and as an additive in food products.

Traders are now worried because certification is not easy and there is just one testing facility in India, which is very expensive.

“Vimta in Hyderabad charges Rs 30,000-35,000 per sample. Hence, a five-batch container will prove to be very expensive. Rajasthan is planning a testing facility. But till that comes up, big manufacturers will gain because they have their own internal testing laboratories. We need advanced testing facilities at subsidised prices, otherwise small exporters will suffer,”

says Jeewan Gandhi, president of the Rajasthan Guar Gum Association.

However, Girdhari Lal Sarda, president of the All India Guar Gum Manufacturers and Exporters’ Association, says there is no problem. “If we have to export, we will have to show certification; it is not the question of big or small traders,” he said.

The level of dioxin found in the consignment from India Glycol was up to 156 picogrammes per gram of fat, which is well above the six picogrammes allowed by EU.

“This was probably because India Glycol manufactures ethanol in the same compound where they produce gum in their plant in Kashipur in Uttarakhand,’ Gandhi said.

A team from EU is visiting India on October 5-7 to discuss the issue. The team will visit Hyderabad and Jodhpur where most of the food-grade guar is produced.