Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh on Wednesday said an unfavourable agreement at the ongoing WTO meet in Bali could "seriously impair" implementation of Food Security Act in the country, as he vouched his support for the "non-negotiable" stand taken by India.
Singh, who wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday, said a number of public welfare schemes being run in his state like Public Distribution System (PDS) will also be jeopardised if any negotiations are allowed in this case. "I would like to re-affirm that India should not take any position in Bali that would compromise the food security interests of hundreds of millions of Indian farmers and poor and marginalised communities that are dependent on the Public Distribution System. "We support the statement of Anand Sharma at the ministerial this morning (in Bali) stating that "food security is non-negotiable".
India should not back down on this position and should not be open to any negotiation," he said in his letter to the PM. Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma, in a strongly-worded message to the WTO members at Bali, on Wednesday said the food security issue is "non-negotiable" for New Delhi.
"The 'peace clause' that has been proposed by the US and the EU is time-bound and not linked to a permanent solution. It also places onerous requirements for data that India has to give and leaves us open to being dragged into the dispute settlement mechanism both under the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) and the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (ASCM).
"Under these circumstances, any dilution of the G-33 proposal is completely unacceptable to the people of India," Singh said.
He explained the reasons for his concerns. "As you are aware, Chhattisgarh has led the country in protecting the interests of its farmers with the highest MSP for paddy, a well structured procurement program that reaches right upto the smallest farmer and an expanded PDS that is acknowledged to be one of the best in the country. "The state was also the first to enact a food security legislation (Chhattisgarh Food Security Act). Much of this will stand jeopardised if India signs off its right to procurement from farmers or agrees to any limits that are imposed under the AoA or the ASCM. "As our Commerce minister has rightly pointed out, the Uruguay Round agreements allowed developed countries to retain huge subsidies (the US and EU alone have USD 400 billion of subsidies as agricultural support) while lecturing India on the need to limit its subsidies," he wrote.
Singh said "any agreement in Bali would also seriously impair the government of India's ability to implement the National Food Security Act." "This is an issue that the entire nation stands united. The people of Chhattisgarh, as indeed the rest of the country, fully endorse and support the tough stand taken by the government of India on this. They will be equally unforgiving if government of India succumbs to pressure from the developed countries and compromises the interests of 1.2 billion Indians for all time to come.
"Under these circumstances I sincerely hope that our sentiments on this will be conveyed to the Commerce Minister and the Indian delegation at Bali," he said.
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