WTO is here to stay! India and farmers have to learn to make a success of WTO!
WTO is a necessary good for the world agriculture. Without our agriculture or for that matter any country’s agriculture goods and services entering into the world trade the concerned agriculture goods and services won’t get the maximum prices. This is the simple basic economic and trade logic. There is in India still lots of ignorance and also lots of prejudices about why WTO? And why not India opts out of WTO? Even the most knowledgeable among our politicians or the new breed of economic experts and other pretenders don’t think it is their duty to explain to the public, more in particular to farmer’s groups the logic of the WTO and how India and our farming is to gain by working within the WTO mechanism and also bargaining with much tenacity, without giving up our basic historic advantages and basic strengths in our agriculture that we have gained through years of hard strategic independence in ensuring India remains self-sufficient in food needs and also ensure food security, considering our long, bad history of famines and poverty.
Our Prime Minister must tour the country extensively, he must be seen by the people in remote areas and he must be teaching his economic beliefs more convincingly before the people. Sonia Gandhi must draft a new set of economic adviser, preferably from universities, young and dynamic persons who may be working and living in foreign universities and bring them back and give them decent tenures and assign them the task of explaining the new economic opportunities for India in the globalising era. There is a wrong notion in the minds of some people, the PM and the FM, in particular who often compare India with China do say that India has to learn many things from China. This is a patent folly. What we can learn?
China is a Communist dictatorship. China is a military dictatorship. The President there is also the military commander, unlike in India the President is merely a Constitutional head and who is also only symbolically the Commander of the Armed Forces. So, India is unique. Even some New Delhi based glossies write editorials saying India should not have joined the WTO in the very beginning, as China joined late and Russia is yet to join etc. This is all simple nonsense!
India is a very different country with a great legacy. That is why every big country in the world is courting India’s opinion on several international issues. This is our democracy’s, our economy’s many new strengths. So, we read with interest that AP Govt. had opened a WTO cell to create awareness among farmers, more so among the state officials about WTO and it impacts on the farmers. So dedicated cell on WTO in the office of the Commissioner of Agriculture is most welcome and we congratulate the Chief Minister Dr.Rajashekar Reddy for some of his plain talk for farmers.