The agreement between India and United States to keep the contentious food subsidy issue out of the proposed world trade agreement is a direct result of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's meetings with president Barack Obama. India had blocked the adoption of a global agreement on custom rates and rules because of the insistence of an aggressive European Union that subsidies given to Indian farmers through government procurement should result in higher import duties on food grains imported from India. while the UPA government had managed to put this proposal in cold storage for four years, the new NDA had told World Trade Organisation that India will block all agreements, until this controversial issue was taken out.
Now the United States has taken the lead to assuage the feelings of the Modi government, saying the agriculture proposals will be negotiated and there will be no time limit on discussions between India and rest of the world. The agreement between New Delhi and Washington will now have to be approved by the members of WTO especially European Union, Japan and China. Obama has promised to speak to the leaders of the European Union, apart from Prime Minister Shinto Abe of Japan and president Li Xinping of China. Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and her team are celebrating saying that the clout of the new government has been recognised by the United States, which will in turn persuade other countries.
But the elections to the US Congress earlier this month have complicated the issue as the democratic party to which Obama belongs has lost control of senate, the upper house of the Congress. And even in the house of representatives, the lower house, Republicans have increased their majority. There is a strong hawkish opinion in the United States that India should not get away with giving high level of subsidies to its farmers, as it will cause imbalance in global trade. Unlike India where the government has the power to negotiate international agreements without seeking approval of parliament, in the United States, the treaty making powers of the president can be blocked by one or both houses. The anti subsidy lobbies have said India should not get an open ended agreement, and it should be made to agree for a time-frame during which the subsidies are brought down. India has argued that the procurement of food grains is needed to battle poverty, hunger and malnutrition, which is the primary responsibility of the government.
Nirmala Sitharaman and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj are confident that the pro India lobby in United States, which organised big reception for Narendra Modi during his visit to Washington and New York, would work hard to see that the legislature will support the agreement made by Obama to protect India's food security. The action will be on the global stage and is crucial for the prestige of both Obama and Modi.
Tailpiece: Harsha Vardhan, who was shifted from the heavyweight health to the lighter ministry of science and technology has been asked by the BJP high command to concentrate on assembly elections in Delhi, as he is still the frontrunner for the chief ministership in the party. This has dashed the hopes of state unit president Satish Upadhyay, who was nursing ambitions of heading the city government.