Making Globalization Work for India

December 19, 2006

At an interactive session organized by ICRIER on "Making Globalization Work for India", Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel prize winner in economics in 2001 and professor at Columbia University, provided a rare insight into as how the bilateral, multilateral and WTO plus trade agreements could help India to grow tremendously in global markets.

Dr Stiglitz said that calling the present round a Development Round was not justified going by the agenda set; it was done merely to begin the new round of talks. “We have to understand that the trade ministers are not development economists”. However, the response to the failure of the Doha Round was the multiplicity of bilateral and regional trade agreements. And this in his view would be disastrous as WTO is a protection against going back.

Agriculture, he said, is very mixed in its effects. Agricultural exporters are obviously hurt by all the subsidies. At the same time, food importing countries will be worse off if subsidies are eliminated. He also said that the developing countries should push for a larger development agenda at global trade conferences. He was also of the view that DSB was as good an option for developing countries as the WTO Negotiating Rounds insofar as targeting subsidies

Hon’ble Minister of Commerce & Industry, Mr. Kamal Nath is addressing the participants at the Interactive Session on ‘Making Globalization Work for India’.

are concerned; the crop subsidies in the US have already been actioned upon and the cotton subsidies may disappear through the dispute settlement mechanism much before the conclusion of the Doha Round.

In his opening remarks, Commerce Minister Kamal Nath spoke about India's recent growth rates and added that "for India, the rule-based multilateral system is very important but there could be no globalization without globalization in agriculture. And there cannot be globalization in agriculture as long as the structural flaws in that sector remain unaddressed." Other participants in the working session suggested that the developing countries must explore new policy alternatives.