JAIPUR: The country's negotiators at the ongoing World Trade Organisation's ministerial level meeting in Hong Kong have been asked to seek greater flexibility for India and other developing countries in retaining high tariffs lines to protect their producers and local markets. The right of farmers over use of land, water and seeds should be protected along with the indigenous knowledge and the sovereignty to decide the crop pattern and production, a consultation held at the Institute of Development Studies said.

Basing their observations on four studies, which analysed the impact of WTO on rice, chilies, soybean and mustard, the participants at the consultation said the agreements with WTO in the past had adversely affected marginal producers in India. A greater dialogue with the stakeholders and a more active participation on the part of Agriculture Ministry rather than the Commerce Ministry, were needed in the case of agriculture sector, they said.

The consultation, coordinated by Surjit Singh, professor at IDS, said all forms of agricultural export subsidies and other indirect forms of dumping should be phased out immediately. The manipulation of shifting the subsidy to the exempted categories should not be allowed. Patenting natural life forms like seeds, genetic resources for food and agriculture and naturally occurring micro-organism should be excluded from TRIPS, it said. The experience with genetically- modified crops had been disastrous in almost all States. GM technology was capital intensive, economically unviable and culturally unacceptable, it was pointed out.

All the food subsidies should be provided in cash. The market access concessions should not be conditional on those countries opening their markets and the duties on basic food security crops should be exempt from market access reduction commitments, the speakers said.

The consultation, also addressed by Dushyant Ojha, Secretary, the Communist Party of India, Rajasthan, Om Mathur and N.R.Sethia of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) besides economists, M.S.Rathore and Vidya Sagar felt that India should not agree on subsidies unless the European Union and the United States reduced them considerably. In fact India should desist from bilateral agreements EU and USA were entering into and that are purported to "coerce poor countries into submission'', it said.

"In India agriculture is way of life and source of livelihood unlike in EU and USA where it is commerce. Hope our negotiators keep this in mind while arguing India's case,'' the consultation noted. It felt that if the concerns of the developing nations are not addressed to then the only option could be to keep agriculture out of WTO.

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