Free Trade or Food Security – Did India succeed at WTO Bali?

Abstract

In this article, we critically analyse the imbalanced outcomes of the WTO Bali conference and briefly examine the evolution of India’s public food subsidy programme. We show that India did not completely succeed at the Bali negotiations. The result of this “half-victory” is that the WTO structurally continues to favour powerful nations from the North at the cost of food security for millions of poor people living in the South.

Keywords: Free Trade, World Trade Organization (WTO), Indian National Food Security Act