In the policy ethos generated by the government's economic reform, voluntary choices are often presented as inevitable actions. Nowhere is this more evident than in the area of trade policy. Being a signatory to the WTO, it is argued, makes hard decisions with regard to quantitative restrictions, tariffs and state support in the form of implicit or explicit subs idies 'unavoidable'. Consider the situation with regard to the agricultural sector which is still a source of livelihood for a substantial number of Indians. In the name of India's commitments to the WTO, almost all quantitative restrictions on imports of raw and processed agricultural products have been withdrawn at a time when world prices have been falling quite sharply. If this is resulting in a collapse of incomes earned by coconut growers, rubber producers and cereal-producing farmers, that outcome is regarded as the inevitable price that India must pay for being a part of the international community. It is also seen as the quid pro quo for the opportunity to engage international markets and benefit from international trade.
 
There are two issues ignored by those advancing such an argument. First, very often India's commitments have proved to be way beyond even what the international community expects. Take for example, India's zero tariff bindings on a range of agricultural commodities, including the case of an item like rice which is a major crop cultivated in the country. This had been done when India had recourse to quantitative restrictions, but clearly, no thought had gone into what India accepted as part of the Uruguay Round agreement in terms of the reduction of trade restrictions since at that point of time acceptance was presented as inevitable and unavoidable, and recourse was taken to the argument that quantitative controls could continue since there was a balance of payments problem. Simultaneously, however, Finance Ministry officials went about boasting that the balance of payments was healthy and thus evoked the demand from the US and other countries that India should dismantle quotas. Inevitably, India lost her case for maintaining quotas, and when the time for removing quantitative restrictions arrived, by which time international prices had fallen significantly, this commitment proved too much for even India's unthinking reformers to swallow. Fortunately for the government, India's trading partners, including the most powerful within and outside the WTO like the US and Europe, accepted this commitment as being 'excessive'. In the event, as part of the process of doing away the quantitative restrictions, the government renegotiated its tariff bindings, allowing it the freedom to raise tariffs to as much as 80 per cent from zero in the case of rice. Put simply, neither is what India accepted inevitable, nor is it sacrosanct once accepted.
 
The second issue that is ignored is the fact that even the strongest among the world's trading nations, which would be the ones to benefit the most from a free and liberal trade regime, are aware of the dangers of openness and the benefits of intervention. This is most visible in the agricultural arena, which is a site for intense conflict between the members of the OECD, the club of the world's richest nations. Brought into the mainstream of the multilateral trading agenda only during the Uruguay Round, this was an area where the least concessions were on offer from those trading blocs and nations like the EU and Japan, which had the most to give. In the event, a traditional and more 'labour intensive' sector proved to be one which threatened to completely derail WTO negotiations because of what the US considered the intransigence of the EU, Japan and some Southeast Asian countries. The bone of contention was the massive support being offered by many European countries to their agricultural sectors, which effectively closed their markets to exporters from elsewhere.
 
It is indeed true that finally even these countries accepted some of the rules with regard to agricultural trade that were formulated as part of the Uruguay Round. But they as well as the US, even while making a show of accepting WTO norms, shifted to emphasising forms of support which were WTO compatible because they ostensibly are non-distorting from a trade point of view. To facilitate that transition, policies of agricultural support were conveniently placed in 'boxes' labeled red, green and blue, with only those in the red box treated as WTO incompatible. The shift away from red to green and blue box policies has, of course, been combined with contentious trade barriers which have provided the staple for the activities of the WTO's Dispute Settlement Panel. According to a recently prepared analysis from the OECD Secretariat, the overall cost to consumers and tax payers of the agricultural policies of its member governments amounted to $361 million in 1999 or 1.4 per cent of GDP. Support to agricultural producers amounted to 40 per cent of the value of farm receipts.
 
The forms of intervention through which such support is provided include, in the main, production subsidies and trade barriers, which according to the Secretariat "distort production and trade, reduce economic efficiency and may damage the environment". And those benefiting from such support are not small or marginal farmers, but the most productive and profitable ones. The top 25 per cent of farms as measured by their annual sales values accounted for 90 per cent of the support provided by these governments.