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Stage set for pro-poor role by India

by Lynn Ockersz

While the composition of India's Congress-led government reflects a Left and centric-ward tilt in the domestic power balance, the thinking of the new government points as never before to a marked convergence between India's foreign and domestic policies.

Twelve year old Indian girl Rita Munda carries a load of freshly made bricks on her head at a brick factory near Agartala, 11 June 2004, on the eve of World Day against Child Labour. Rita earns INR 450 (9.97 US Dollars) per month in her work at the factory. It is believed that one out of every two children between the age of six and fourteen has no access to primary education while some 14.4 per cent of ten to fourteen year old children in India are child labourers. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) observes the 12th June, as World Day against Child Labour each year. AFP PHOTO

Take for instance, the new administration's emphasis on the primacy of the domestic agricultural sector.

While underlining the need to ensure continued gains for the local agricultural sector in future global multilateral trade negotiations, Indian Trade Minister Kamal Nath was quoted telling Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorin recently that: "Agriculture is not a commodity, is not a commerce, but a way of life.

We would like every country to see India's complixities, its multiclimatic characteristics and that agriculture for India is a way of life. These are things which have to be understood and have to be built in in any agreement in the future".

As was abundantly pointed out in many post-poll news analyses, the vote for the Congress and its centric and Left allies, was an 'yes' vote for greater economic equity and justice on the part of local sections which felt left out of the BJP's economic growth process.

It was largely a revolt by those segments of the Indian population which believed they did not gain satisfactorily from the ongoing process of global economic integration which had a close corollary in the BJP-led governments cooperation with the US in its "global war on terror".

While we see here the primacy of economic considerations in the shaping of a developing country's foreign policy, the new Congress-led government's need to respond positively to the needs of its domestic support base, which consists considerably of those sections with economic grievances bred by the inequalities of globalization, could be expected to shape the principal bases of its foreign policy. Thus domestic and foreign policy considerations interact closely.

This is the reason why one could expect India in particular to play a more robust role in the days ahead in multilateral trade fora, such as the WTO, with a markedly pro-developing countries perspective.

In these major negotiations the Indian centre could be expected to constantly look over its shoulders at its domestic support base which consists also of agricultural interests. Hence the Indian Trade Minister's observations on the importance of the local agricultural base.

The space, therefore, could be considered as having opened on the global stage for a more vigorous championing of the vital interests of the developing countries by India-of which agriculture is one. Developments on the foreign scene could also be seen as conducing to the adoption of such a role by India.

We have, for instance, pronouncements by the G8 countries that India and China too should be coopted into their deliberations. It must be remembered that the G8 has hitherto included in its fold only the world's biggest economic powers - the US, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Canada and Russia.

The favourable assessment of India and China by the G8 is a tacit acknowledgement of the growing influence and stature of India and China on the global stage.

If coopted into the G8 fold, India would be in a position to take up the cause of the developing countries in global economic deliberations and other vital processes.

India's fresh emphasis on "multilateralism" as opposed to "Unilateralism" in the conduct of world affairs would only facilitate this process further.

Commenting on this principle Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh was quoted saying that: "The new world order cannot be created unilaterally, it must be a United Nation's centric arrangement, it is just as well that Britain and the US have now seen the usefulness of involving that UN on Iraq."

Indian opposition to "unilateralism" points in turn to a rejection of the "unipolar" world concept. It translates into the recognition that India would oppose hegemonism in global affairs by a single power or group of powers. This position too would help enlarge the space for pro-poor activism by India.

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