Answer in about 150 words: Describe India’s objections to agricultural negotiations at the World Trade Organisation. (2026, 10 Marks)
India does not object to disciplining farm subsidies. It objects to the way the Agreement on Agriculture (1995) measures them: the Uruguay Round protected the support rich members were already giving and capped the support poor members might give. With nearly half its workforce in farming and about 81 crore people entitled to subsidised grain under the National Food Security Act, 2013, India has held these objections under every government.
1. Unequal entitlements
- Members that subsidised heavily in 1986–88 recorded an Aggregate Measurement of Support (AMS) and kept the right to go on providing it. India recorded none, so it is held to the de minimis ceiling of 10% of the value of production.
- Per-farmer support in the United States is far larger than India’s, yet India faces the tighter legal cap. The rule rewards whoever subsidised first, not whoever distorts trade least.
2. The frozen reference price and public stockholding
- Market price support is measured against a 1986–88 external reference price, about ₹3.5 a kilogram for rice and wheat. As the minimum support price rises with inflation, the notional subsidy grows even when real support is flat.
- India wants the reference price indexed or food-security procurement left out of the calculation.
- The Bali peace clause (2013), made open-ended in November 2014, only suspends legal challenges. It covers existing programmes for “traditional staple food crops” and carries notification conditions. India first invoked it for rice in 2020 and did so again in May 2026, notifying rice support of about US$7.6bn for 2024–25. The United States, Australia, Paraguay and Ukraine have counter-notified far higher figures, which India rejects as flawed.
3. No safeguard for smallholders
- India wants a usable Special Safeguard Mechanism against import surges, matching the Special Agricultural Safeguard that richer members already have. The dispute over its trigger broke up the July 2008 talks.
4. Sequencing and status
- India will not trade agriculture for new issues before the Doha development mandate is honoured. It resists US moves to deny large developing members special and differential treatment, since development is measured per head, not by total GDP.
- Brazil’s sugar dispute (DS579) shows the exposure is real: the 2021 panel found Indian cane support above de minimis, and India’s appeal sits before a non-functioning Appellate Body.
Conclusion
MC14 at Yaoundé (March 2026) produced no agriculture outcome, and at the first post-MC14 farm talks (9 July 2026) developing members could only insist that the existing mandates still stand. India’s case is a justice claim about historical baselines: in the image Ha-Joon Chang (2002) borrowed from Friedrich List, the North is “kicking away the ladder” it once climbed.