The quiet plan to starve millions of Indians
There’s been little coverage in the UK blogosphere of the EU-India Free Trade Agreement (FTA), due to be signed off in February 2012 after 5 years of negotiations. What coverage there has been has tended to focus on the possible impacts of the WTO Mode 4, built into the FTA at the demand of the Indian government, will have on the terms and conditions of British workers. This is a relatively insignificant part of the whole.
Economist Left Outside (LO) does provide a decent overview of some of the real issues:
Will the trade help poor countries restructure their economies in productive ways or will it retard or reverse that process.
I’m tempted to believe it will with respect to India’s already well established services sectors. Demand from Europe should swell employment in the relatively high productivity service sector, which is what we want to see.
Even LO, though, expresses doubts:
However, investment in agriculture will probably become depressed in India as competition from subsidised European crops depresses returns in this sector. This could increase low-investment subsistence farming and decrease large scale efficient farming methods.
Sadly, it’s an awful lot worse than that. Unless the European left acts quickly in concert with Indian colleagues, there is a very real risk that the Trade Agreement now in its final stages of negotiation will consign millions of already impoverished Indian villagers to further destitution.
An important new document, A Right-to-Food Impact Assessment of the EU-India Free Trade Agreement by an NGO Consortium, finds that the sudden arrival of subsidised food imports from an EU desperate to increase cheap exports in the light of falling domestic demand is likely to have devastating consequences on local producers, and on their ability to feed themselves and their families. This is in a country where 224 million (26.9%) of the population already live with chronic hunger.
Because of budget constraints, the report focuses on two agricultural areas, milk and poultry. In both areas, it provides convincing evidence that small-scale farmers will be hit hardest by cheap imports and increased price volatility in circumstances that are already heavily debt laden. When it comes to poultry meat, we find that domestic producers (amongst them 50% of all landless and marginal farmers) will suffer because chicken legs that would otherwise head for waste disposal, because Europeans prefer fillet, will instead be heading for urban India.
Perversely, the impact will be greater because, while India looks like it will agree to the abolition (over the next seven years) of import tariffs, the Common Agricultural Policy Direct Subsidy arrangements will remain untouched.
Even more perversely, these new developments come at a time when India is being urged to buy European sovereign debt to keep the world economy going. Effectively therefore, the Indian government appears to be on the verge of agreeing to subsidise the EU’s continued support for its farmers, so that EU farmers can then export food to India, which in turn will mean that poor Indians do not get to eat.
The Impact Assessment report is long and detailed, but is well worth reading. Of particular interest is the forensic scrutiny of the EU’s own formal obligations towards the people of India, which are currently being ignored.
[The Lisbon] Treaty defines ‘respect for human rights’ as one of the fundamental values ‘on which the Union is founded’ (Article 2). Article 3.5 also elevates these values, making them the basis for the Union’s ‘relations with the wider world’. This is reaffirmed in Article 21, which states explicitly:
‘The Union’s action on the international scene shall be guided by the principles which have inspired its own creation, development and enlargement, and which it seeks to advance in the wider world: democracy, the rule of law, the universality and indivisibility of human rights and fundamental freedoms, respect for human dignity, the principles of equality and solidarity, and respect for the principles of the United Nations Charter and international law.’
Article 21 expressly obliges the EU to ensure ‘consistency’ with these principles in all areas of its external action. Moreover, concerning the common commercial policy of the EU, Article 207 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union refersdirectly to these values and principles of the EU, and clearly stipulates: ‘The common commercial policy shall be conducted in the context and principles of the objectives of the Union’s external action’.
The Impact Assessment report calls on the EU to respect these obligations by carrying out its own, more extensive, ex-ante Right-to-Food Impact Assessment before the FTA is signed, followed by a further post-hoc assessment after a specified period.
To date this call has fallen on deaf ears. I’ll be writing to my MP/MEPs about the matter, urging them to do what they can to ensure that millions of rural Indians do not simply become the latest collateral damage of the latest drive to globalisation in the interest of those with the global power.
Linda Kaucher has reported that these bi-lateral agreements were being secretly set-up when the press was focused on the failure of Doha. I know that the TUC passed a motion against the EU-FTA at their last conference but my understanding was that their concern was solely about Indian workers being moved into Britain with no workplace rights, no right to remain and no access to the legal system, ‘creating a tier of slave-like labour in Britain’.
The RMT motion was argued as:
“ potentially the greatest threat to collective bargaining and workers’ rights for many years.”
Under Mode 4, Indian companies operating in Delhi and London could move low-paid workers from India to Britain, undercutting workers domestically.
“Transnational companies will be able to move workers across national borders and nation states will limit their own constitutional authority over these corporations.
“Workers’ rights will be lost forever to corporate power.”
Effectively, this part of the treaty is a UK one because it is anticipated that 80% of its impact will felt here.
http://think-left.org/2011/09/16/the-very-design-of-neoliberal-principles-is-a-direct-attack-on-democracy-and-workers-rights/
I hadn’t realised the impact in India. It is cynical and appalling.