What’s govt trading away?

The government has the obligation to be more transparent about matters of public importance

While some jingoistic elements reacted rapturously to the appointment of the United Kingdom’s first ‘Hindu Prime Minister’, a few sober elements waxed eloquent about the openness with which ethnic diversity is welcomed at the highest level of their government. However, another important takeaway for us as the ‘world’s largest democracy’ is the need to practice transparency in the self-proclaimed ‘mother of all democracies.’

Within a week of taking over the reins of the administration, the UK Secretary of State for International Trade updated the country’s parliament about the progress made in the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations with India. MPs were told that agreement had been reached on 16 of the identified 26 policy areas. Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), tariffs on professional, financial and legal services, terms of business visas and, of course, reduction of the 150% import duty on Scotch whisky in India, were still being discussed, he stated.

Meanwhile, in India, all that we, the citizens (tipplers included), get to know from unnamed government sources is the probable date by which this FTA might be signed, if at all, depending on which media outlet one subscribes to. For detailed information, we have to await inspired leaks of official papers elsewhere.

Earlier this week, an FTA watchdog accessed a chapter on IPRs leaked from the UK. According to another civil society organisation which analysed its contents, in its current form, this segment of the FTA would “undermine India’s robust pro-public health safeguards by requiring us to change our IPR and drug approval laws to allow for the creation of monopolies on medicines”. If implemented, these skewed proposals would considerably weaken not only our own ability to provide affordable healthcare locally but also that of other developing countries which sources generic medicines from India for their peoples. Millions would be at the mercy of pharma companies that often have no qualms about milking their products for supernormal profits under the guise of IPR protection.

This is not the first time that documents relating to India’s FTA negotiations has been leaked. Sometime ago, Wikileaks released a purported text of the draft FTA with the European Union containing provisions relating to goods, measures pertaining to trade in plants, animals and related products and IPRs. This document appears to have originated from the European Commission in 2009.

Our own government here is parsimonious with updates about this and other FTA negotiations. Barring the occasional op-ed article from subject experts, we have not seriously questioned this enduring information drought. While some readers might like to take pride in the robustness of India’s sarkari secret maintenance systems and procedures with regard to FTA discussions, there is the deeper issue of accountability towards the people which is lost.

Section 4(1) of the RTI Act requires the government to publish all relevant facts and figures while announcing policy decisions that affect the larger public. That applies to the ongoing FTA negotiations as well -- for the simple reason that they are conducted ultimately for the benefit of the citizenry. The government must not reduce itself to brokering agreements that primarily benefit rich farmers, captains of trade, industry, businesses, the financial, legal and other service sectors.

Under our constitutional scheme of division of powers, entering into and implementing bilateral and international agreements is solely the executive’s prerogative. People’s representatives in parliament and state legislatures neither have any role to play during the negotiations nor are they required to ratify these agreements afterwards. Citizen oversight is the only alternative in the absence of such checks and balances. So, the government has the obligation to be more transparent about these matters of public importance.