India not for changing modalities of Doha round

Indian government has made it very clear that it is not in favour of tinkering with the basic structure of modalities for the long delayed Doha round of negotiations of World Trade Organisation. The government has said that while it was committed to earliest conclusion of the talks, it was also clear that such a solution can be obtained within the agreed modalities of the round.

Now Delhi, which is hosting a meeting of key trade ministers this week, will be eyeing some sort of informal common grounds around which the formal negotiations can be taken forward later. On top of the agenda will be engaging in some backdoor politics with the US and working on the safeguards mechanism that failed the talks last time.

While India, US and the European Union had some other disagreements too, main reason behind the failure of talks last time was safeguard switches or the extent of surge that was mandated in farm imports before a developing country could switch on the safeguard duty in concerned product. In fact, the degree of surge asked for by the US was double that being offered by developing countries led by India and Brazil, resulting in a stalemate.

Nonetheless, New Delhi will also be conscious this time of not getting itself painted as the spoiler of the party. After failure of talks last year following the deadlock, the blame was put on India by some countries, in particular the US and European Union. Only at a later stage it was realised by most members that it was sticky stand by the US and huge farm subsidies by the European Union which were responsible for a stalemate.