Critically examine the various controversial issues in the functioning of the World Trade Organization from the point of view of developing countries, particularly India. (1999)
The question was set in the year the Seattle Ministerial (1999) collapsed amid street protests and developing members’ complaints of exclusion. Stephen D. Krasner (Structural Conflict, 1985) had already argued that the South wants rules that allocate outcomes while the North wants rules that free markets. Each of the WTO’s controversies fits that pattern, and most are still unresolved in 2026.
The controversies
- Decision-making. Consensus is formal equality, but agendas were long settled in small “green room” meetings that thinly staffed delegations could not follow. Yet consensus is also the South’s main defence.
- Agriculture. The Agreement on Agriculture let members that subsidised heavily in 1986–88 keep large AMS entitlements, while India was held to a 10% de minimis ceiling. India’s procurement support is measured against 1986–88 reference prices, so it can look like a breach on paper. The Bali peace clause (2013), made open-ended in November 2014, protects public stockholding only until a permanent solution is agreed; none has been, India invoked the clause for rice again in May 2026, and MC14 (Yaoundé, March 2026) produced no agriculture outcome.
- TRIPS and health. Product patents forced India to amend its Patents Act in 2005. Biopiracy over turmeric and neem exposed a clash with the Convention on Biological Diversity; the 2022 COVID decision fell far short of the waiver India sought.
- New issues. The Singapore issues (investment, competition, procurement and trade facilitation) and the push to link labour and environmental standards were seen as protectionism by other means. India helped drop three Singapore issues in 2003–04 and, with South Africa, blocked incorporation of the Investment Facilitation for Development agreement at MC14. The e-commerce duty moratorium, which India long called a revenue loss for the South, lapsed there for the first time since 1998.
- Implementation and S&DT. The Uruguay Round’s benefits came late, with textile quotas lasting until 2005. The US now wants larger developing members to give up special and differential treatment, a demand aimed at India and China.
- Dispute settlement. Litigation is costly for poorer members. India lost the quantitative-restrictions case in 1999 and the solar local-content case in 2016. The Appellate Body has not worked since December 2019, India’s appeal in Brazil’s sugar case is stuck, and India is outside the interim MPIA.
The other side of the ledger
- Liberal institutionalists in the tradition of Robert O. Keohane argue that rules protect the weak. India won cases against measures hitting its textiles, steel and shrimp exports that it could never have won by bargaining.
- Services liberalisation, opposed by India in the Uruguay Round, became its biggest gain.
- Amrita Narlikar (International Trade and Developing Countries, 2003) shows how coalitions turn weakness into leverage, as India’s G-33 and G-20 did. India also accepted the fisheries subsidies agreement on 20 July 2026, showing it can compromise.
- But Ha-Joon Chang’s Kicking Away the Ladder (2002) argues that today’s rich states industrialised with the tariffs and subsidies the rules now forbid. The structural critique stands.
Conclusion
The developing countries’ complaints are justified on agriculture, TRIPS and the unfulfilled development promises of Doha. The WTO’s real problem now is paralysis: US tariffs outside its rules, a disabled appellate system and India’s own turn to FTAs. India’s veto has stopped rules it disliked but has not secured those it wants. A working multilateral system with development at its centre is still India’s best option.