Free Trade Policies and Impact on Sustainable Development, Social and Gender Justice: A Case Study of the EU-India Trade Relations

Workshop organized by Heinrich Boell Foundation (India), Centad (New Delhi), ICR (New Delhi), Focus on the Global South, India and WIDE (Brussels)

13-14 November, 2009 India Islamic Cultural Centre, New Delhi

Day 1, 13 November 2009

The two-day workshop began with welcome addresses by Linu Mathew Philip (Centad) and Michael Koeberlein (Heinrich Boll Foundation). Mr. Mathew Philip said trade negotiations, in 2009, was stalled mainly because of the disagreements on non-trade issues (market access, intellectual property right, non-tariff barriers etc). Non-trade issues were emphasized by EU in the free trade negotiations. India’s ambitions in trade policy stems from its desire to promote exports to the EU. India has so far signed FTAs with Sri Lanka and Thailand; the rest are being negotiated. The new Indian Trade Policy, approved last summer, is based on the neoliberal development pathway and completely misses the social development and gender aspect. The workshop, he said, was a platform for discussions with stakeholders and partners to suggest new and alternative ideas to take care of both issues in the EU-India FTA.

According to Michael Koeberlein, the first gender and trade workshop was held in March 2008. He said trade agreements has social and gender implications. At the EU-India Summit of the heads of states on 6 November, it was mutually agreed that climate change, terrorism, global financial meltdown and trade were the core areas of cooperation. Interestingly, India still focuses more on individual countries of the EU because it is still not familiar with either the constitution of the EU or with whom to deal—the European Commission or European Parliament. In the last two years, there have been seven rounds of talks between India and the EU. This was stalled in 2009 because of disagreements over non-trade issues such as child labour, public procurement, and access to the Indian market in various sectors. The main focus of the EU-India FTA is tariffs. Non-trade issues are largely ignored despite the EU’s desire for their inclusion in the free trade agreement. Nobody knows exactly how it will move forward. India is quite ambitious, negotiating around 26 free trade agreements simultaneously. But there is little success largely due to the complexities of free trade agreements.

The Keynote Address titled “Free Trade Policies and Impact on Sustainable Development, Social and Gender Justice: A Case Study of the EU-India Trade Relations” was delivered by Devaki Jain. She argued that free trade agreements are not free, as trade is tethered in highly controlled systems to benefit some at the cost of others. She pointed out the need to move advocacy from gendering, most useful in the previous decades up to around 2000, to reconstructing macro-economic policies including regional and global economic arrangements, as a lobby not only for women but for economic justice in an economic democracy.   Click here to read the paper

Opening Plenary: Free Trade Agreements and Gender

The opening plenary was chaired by Renana Jhabvala (National Coordinator, SEWA and Chairperson, SEWA Bharat). Ms. Jhabvala pointed out that in all segments of the economy, we are moving away from employment for poor and environment-friendly technologies to the opposite. For example in waste collection, there is an increased movement to environment-unfriendly technologies, which also leads to unemployment. In places like Bangalore, contract for waste collection is being given to private companies to burn or for land filling. Similar is the situation in retail. In the urban areas, weekly markets are been closed down in part because of the arrival of malls. Street vendors are just being forced out. In the construction sector manual work is being replaced by machine work, replacing unskilled female labour. Unfortunately, women are not taught skills. Where skills are taught, women are not accepted. There are certain sectors where more and more women are being employed. The outsourcing sector is a case in point. Homework is on the increase; but this is not matched by the increase in earnings. There is a feeling of insecurity due to uncertainty of work availability. There is a need for social security of some type; although we are growing into a modern country there is no sign of such social security net being put in place.

Renana Jhabvala also pointed out that in many social movements it is the women who are in the forefront. They form small organisations to continue the movement; they prefer smaller, more humane forms of organisation. Once they are successful, these are taken over by men. So the question is how to remain small and scale up at the same time. She gave the example of micro-finance to illustrate the point; it started as a small organisation but once it grew in size the corporate sector took over. The cooperative model of organising is favoured by women. Unfortunately, the government is demoting such a mode of organising. What we need to do is build up these women’s institutions. Talking about the trade link, she said it is a narrow aspect of the whole process of globalisation. There is a need today to organise internationally, and adopt the best practices. Women should organise internationally.

      

Speaking on “FTAs and Gender Justice” Christa Wichterich (WIDE) said it was nearly two years ago that the project of networking, exchange and capacity building between Indian and European civil society organisations with a focus on the Indo-EU FTA, and on social and gender justice, was started. It had the following objectives: 1) not to allow policy makers and governments on both sides to decide upon deals and policies which are decisive for the lives and livelihoods of nearly 1.5 billion people in India and the EU without any transparency and democratic involvement of civil society; 2) not to allow policy makers to separate trade policies from development objectives and social policies, ensure that trade policies were shaped in a pro-development, pro-equity and pro-poor way; and 3) to raise awareness among CSOs and policy makers about the gender implications of trade policies.    click here to read

At the workshop one and a half years back, the asymmetries between the so-called “equal partners” India and the EU in terms of GDP, trade balance and tariff reduction, were highlighted. It was also pointed out that the EU-imposed principle of reciprocity between unequal partners would result in unequal gains. WTO-plus issues on the EU agenda were flagged and concerns raised that the new trade regime would favour corporate interests, in the EU and in India, and cause high development and social costs in terms of food and social insecurity, loss of resources and livelihood to be borne mainly by small and vulnerable actors in the markets, among them many women.

While the financial crisis affects EU, the food crisis and climate change affects India. Due to shrinking demand and exports, both sides have accelerated their efforts to increase bilateral economic cooperation and trade agreements in addition to the efforts at Doha. India has strongly opposed the regime of agricultural subsidies in industrialised countries, as well as new issues like government procurement and WTO-plus issues, and any constraints on domestic regulation. It has defended the provision of generic drugs and farmers’ right to access genetic resource for development purpose. India’s interest in signing new FTAs is to double its exports of goods and services within the time span of its new Foreign Trade Policy 2009 to 2014. In the FTA framework, India is under pressure to give up the policy space it has used to resist the extension of patents beyond 20 years and data exclusivity (TRIPS plus and UPOV 91), and thus public health and food security come under threat. There are now mounting protests by social movements in India against the adverse effects of FTAs.

In India, the largest milk producer in the world, the dairy sector is an 80 per cent small-scale sector and 80 per cent of workers are women. This sector contributes one third of the gross income to rural household, and therefore it is an important livelihood resource for the poor. When India imported large quantities of highly subsidised milk powder from the EU in 1999/2000, women’s dairy cooperatives and small dairy farmers were immediately adversely affected. The dairy industry in EU is facing a problem of insufficient demand. Therefore, the EU-India FTA will create business opportunities for the corporate sector while locking up development objectives of small-scale market agents, and thus widening social rifts in society.

Neoclassical economists assume that trade liberalisation unavoidably will displace people from “traditional”, “unproductive” sectors but would provide new opportunities for them in modern sectors. However there is no cheap production and no money making without social and environmental costs. Research shows that trade policies, like any other economic policy, involve and impact men and women differently, while interacting with caste, class, ethnicity, religion and other social categories. The opening up of markets has redistributive effects and change national economies and domestic markets as gendered processes of production, reproduction and consumption.

The recent UN World Survey on the Role of Women in Development 2009 highlights a contradiction in the gender and trade linkage. Due to trade liberalisation, there is an increase in informal employment in the low productivity sectors, particularly for women, and thus leading to increased gender inequality. The typical pattern of employment in open markets is encroaching upon all labour markets, including Europe, and affects in particular women as flexible labour force. Christa Wichterich makes the following suggestions for addressing the above mentioned problems. A country that wants to be competitive in the global market has to invest in its women and use its “female talents” (World Economic Forum, Delhi). UNCTAD has advised that women’s employment be taken as a criterion for the selection of special products to be excluded from tariff liberalisation. Trade relations and trade rules are needed within a development framework which serve the interests of sustainable economic development, and has basic needs and rights, food sovereignty, and poverty eradication at their core. On both sides, civil society organisations have called for a halt in the negotiations in order to reclaim policy space to shape trade policies in a more socially just, gender equitable, sustainable and democratic way.

The discussion brought forth questions such as why should women organize internationally when being small is more humane and personal. Renana Jhabvala answered that being small but big at the same time is a big challenge. She gave an example of street vendors organising internationally. Internationally organising of domestic workers has the advantages of bringing them together, listing their complaints and seeing how these can be tackled. How to keep it up, however, is a difficult proposition. A participant pointed out that gender has to be looked at from a holistic point of view and not just through the lens of trade. He said that we need to be clear that one aspect may be affected by trade but there are other arenas which can be handled by domestic policy space. Moreover, no FTA/WTO regulation restricts domestic policy space. Rather it is the weakness of domestic policy that is to blame. Christa Wichterich, in response to the questions and comments, admitted that trade liberalisation is not the root cause of all problems, but as an important policy tool, its additional impact on gender inequality needs to be taken into account. There is already enough evidence of such additional adverse impacts on gender inequality. In addition, the current pattern of trade liberalisation is such that it necessarily makes use of women’s labour on informal and exploitative terms.

Session on “Access to Resources & Services for Gender and Social Justice”

Chaired by Shefali Sharma (Third World Network), presentations were made by Ranja Sengupta (Centad), Kshitij Urs (Action aid) and Jaya Mehta (Independent Researcher). Shefali Sharma pointed out that in India there was a long struggle for women’s right to land. She said women were caretakers—taking care of children and are often responsible for health.

      

Kshitij Urs (Association for promoting Social Action) speaking on “Access to Water” said there were two perspectives when it came to the issue of water. One, water is to be shared. The other perspective is that water is a product—in fact, the best product because it does not need to be processed, patented. You just have to control it. This contradiction is starkly visible in India today. It is a big business with profit of 40-45 per cent every year. Because there is a lot of profit to be made, a lot of interest is being shown in this sector. Many new actors are coming in and new theories evolved. Water policies are drafted by private bodies without any discussion by elected bodies. The philosophy behind this new development is that anything happens behind closed doors—a toilet or bathroom—is a private activity. The government is giving up the responsibility of providing water and ensuring sanitation. Bangalore was presented as a case in point. There, public water service provision has shrunk to make way for private investors. When a new area is developed, the water and sanitation needs are no longer the responsibility of the state. This goes against the Municipal Act, and in fact, against the Constitution.

For the whole of the State a super-institution called the Karnataka Urban Infrastructure Development Finance Corporation (KUIDFC) is in place. This kind of organisation has proliferated all over India. These are neither government department per se, nor private companies. They are new institutions that steamroll reforms in the states. He pointed out how a single bureaucrat drafted the water policy for Karnataka in a short period of two days. It was approved by the Cabinet without any discussion in the Assembly. The first sentence of this water policy says, “This policy has been drafted to ensure universal access to water, the kind of water that you want and your ability to pay for it.” In practical terms, therefore, our access to water depends on our ability to pay for it. About 12,000 public water taps in Bangalore city alone have been removed in the past six years. He also cited Mysore as the latest example of privatisation of water. He pointed out the transformation of how we understand water and the process through which it is being pushed.

Jaya Mehta (Independent Researcher), speaking on “Access to Land” pointed out that in India, almost 60 per cent of workforce are engaged in agriculture despite the agricultural crisis in the post-reform period. The agricultural workforce is facing livelihood difficulties today. In the post-liberalisation period, employment in agriculture in developing countries is affected much more severely than in developed countries; this is because of the share of employment in agriculture in developing countries is 60 per cent as compared to a mere 5 per cent in developed countries. The increasing population density in developing countries means that there is a decline in land-man ratio. This is further exacerbated by trade liberalisation under the WTO regime. Besides, trade liberalisation and increasing population has further increased inequality in the land distribution.

A similar picture is seen in India. Arable land has declined notably from 133 million hectares in 1961 to 107.6 million hectares in 2002-03 due to rapid urbanisation and arable land being used for setting up Special Economic Zones (SEZs). NSSO divides the population into the five different groups by size of their holdings. More than two-third of the total population hold about 43 per cent of total land, while less than 10 per cent of the population hold almost one-fourth of the total land. Moreover, about 25 per cent of the total population hold more than half of the total land. Most of the small holdings are non-economical, insufficient for cultivation or non-viable for production in an efficient manner. Hence, land distribution in India is extremely unequal.

Jaya Mehta also dwelt on the issue of gender aspect of access to land. About 74 per cent of women are engaged in agriculture. A large share of the men workforce is engaged in non-farm sector due to the inability of women to go outside for non-farm sector work. But in order to earn a sustainable livelihood income, women have to work in the farm sector and men have to work in non-farm sector in deteriorating employment conditions. Women have been at the forefront of the struggles for land, but the title is given to the head of household who is the man. Women do not get land entitlements in a patriarchal society due to social and cultural constrains despite the presence of the Succession Act. Jaya Mehta asserted that there is a need to improve women’s access to land, and one possible option to do this is through collective farming.

Ranja Sengupta (Centad) spoke on “Access to Health and Credit”. According to her, health is a resource for economic and social well-being. Malaria, TB, anaemia, HIV/AIDS, cancer, etc are the diseases that, along with undernutrition (under weight and under height children), have a clear gender dimension in India. It is observed that the gender disparity across health indicators due to limited access for women to health resources is much higher in the rural areas than that in urban areas. Per capita expenditure on health for women is very low and the ratio between men and women became worse in the rural area. Gender inequalities in health indicators in India clearly also has a relation with location, employment, education and income group status. Arguably, where there is a constraint on health care, women experience a greater constraint compared to men. Meanwhile, increasing use of reproductive assistance is observed.    Click here to read the full presentation

With respect to health indicators, India is much worse than the EU; in 2005, the maternal mortality rate was 450 as compared to 27 in EU region. For cancer, the mortality rate is 100 per 1 lakh population in India and 142 per 1 lakh population in the EU region in 2004. The Patent Act 2005 is likely to push up drug prices enormously. It is already observed that there is high difference between low-end generic drugs and branded drugs in India; also, there is a high difference in prices within branded drugs. TRIPS-plus conditions in the EU-India FTA will increase the market control of branded producers by barring the entry of generic drug producers. Though the government of India has rejected provisions like data exclusivity and patent term extension, government control on price can't prevent the companies from setting high initial drug prices. This agreement will help the EU pharma to flourish by increasing their share in the Indian market. Traditional medicines (Ayurveda, Unani, and Siddha) will be dearer; a higher proportion of rural population and many women's diseases are being treated by these medicines. Thus, the FTA will worsen the overall health indicators and there will be increased gender inequality across health indicators. UPOV 1991 protects seed breeder's right rather than farmer's right, which is further worsening health indicators by threatening food security.

Liberalisation of health services through commitments under Mode 3 in WTO, will lead to difficulties in vulnerable section’s access to health services if public services get replaced by private and foreign facilities to treatment. This section of people cannot afford expensive private health services. While in India only 25 per cent of health expenditure is public, it is 75.6 per cent in EU. Increased privatisation of healthcare services has already replaced public services in India. Besides, medical tourism and lack of domestic regulations may also worsen access to health services for women. On the other hand, commitments under Mode 4 will not give much scope for the domestic health professionals in the EU. However if it did, movement of health professionals abroad may affect the domestic health services adversely. Ranja Sengupta recommended policies such as rejecting TRIPS-plus provisions and more public investment on health.

Moving on to speak on banking sector liberalisation and the EU India FTA, Ranja Sengupta argued that foreign banks in India lend less; in fact, credit related activities involve a mere 7.6 per cent of their capital. The foreign banks are engaged more in derivatives, stocks, securities,—constituting about 28.5 per cent of their capital. This type of activities is more risky and is the very cause of the global financial crisis. India needs credit for meeting development needs, not risky financial activities for speculative profits. Comparatively, there is a relatively higher proportion of women account holders in foreign banks, but disbursement is the lowest (only 7.9 per cent). On the other hand, women constitute 25.5% of account holders in Regional Rural Banks, and credit disbursement to women is much higher at 19.6 per cent of the total. Again, nearly all of foreign bank branches are concentrated in metropolis and other urban areas, which represent only 25 per cent of credit that goes to women. This means three fourth of women’s credit requirements nationwide is untouched by foreign banks. This also means that, domestic banks are pushed to rural areas, but they are unable to provide lending to sectors like agriculture due to the decline in their profits on account of foreign banks outplaying them in high profit earning urban sectors. Given this nature of foreign banks in India, it is unlikely that the EU-India FTA will improve access to credit for needy sectors like agriculture as well as for women, especially in rural areas.

In the discussion that followed, many questions were raised by the audience to the speakers while others made valuable comments. A participant pointed out that a global land grab by foreign companies was taking place through providing access to land to foreign companies. In this situation, what should be the government’s policy to resolve the problem? Despite the food price inflation, farmers are not getting the benefit of high food prices. Therefore, the government should take suitable steps to abolish the intermediaries. It should also modernise the land record system and the holding of land in public trust, for example, forest land, to provide land access to all. The public sector is no longer public as foreign private investors increasingly influence the decision making process. The reproductive issue is important, but government lays not much emphasis on it. Land reform was half hearted. Moreover, 23 per cent of total land held by the forest department does not come under the land redistribution programme. The land reform programme has also been virtually dropped by the government. One participant commented that 10 per cent of total population were landless seems an underestimate. But it was clarified by Jaya Mehta that landless include those who have less than 1 hectare land, not zero land (i.e. no land even for building a house). In the rural areas access to medicine is limited to homeopathy, the price of which is also increasing. To the question whether medial tourism took away critical health services from citizens of India, Ranja Sengupta agreed that this is a possibility. About questions on the surrogacy issue which is becoming an increasingly important revenue earner for medical tourism in India, it was discussed that effective regulation still remains a distant dream and FTAs may make regulation more difficult. A participant pointed out that the caste aspect was missing in the discussion on access to resources.

The session on “Impacts of Free Trade Policy on Agriculture and Fisheries”

This session was chaired by Jaya Mehta (Independent Researcher). Linu Mathew Philip (Centad) speaking on “The EU-India FTA and Impact on Agriculture” pointed out that of the total women workforce 75.38% is engaged in agriculture, making it a highly gender-sensitive sector. In a clear display of disparities, among regular workers women earn only 68.5% of men’s wages while among casual workers women earn about 70% of men’s wages in agriculture. Women are also mostly concentrated in lower end jobs. In general, there is increasing feminisation of agriculture as men migrate in search of better opportunities; with stagnation in the agricultural sector, there is thus an increasing feminisation of poverty as well.    click here to read the presentation


      

Per capita food consumption is declining. On the trade front, India is a net exporter of agricultural food products; however, this surplus is declining on account of rising imports. Between 1993-95 and 2003-05, exports nearly doubled while imports grew almost threefold. EU-India agricultural trade is around 8% of total global exports. Currently, Indian agricultural exports to EU are higher than imports. However, imports from EU are rising rapidly. What is of concern is the fact that India will have to cut much more than EU except in dairy products. The government of India has listed 26 non-tariff barriers in the EU market in agriculture and products, with 18 of them relating to standards. NTBS are also not harmonised, a major problem facing Indian exporters. Meeting NTBS is a problem that faces all small farmers but women farmers find it even more difficult to meet these standards. EU also has high agricultural subsidies which act as effective NTBs.

The speaker pointed out other issues of concern relating to the EU-India FTA. There is limited offer of special safeguard mechanisms (SSMs). In the bilateral negotiations, there are no special products. Till now, EU’s FDI in agriculture as percentage of its total FDI is low; still it accounts for 25% of global FDI in agriculture. Under an FTA, investor’s rights can result in more control over land, water and also in greater exploitation of natural resources. Stricter IPRs means that seeds used have to be compliant to certain certification and cannot be freely exchanged, sold and used by farmers. This undermines women’s role as seed keepers. UPOV 1991 is new international treaty which protects plant breeders’ rights rather than farmers’ rights. The EU wants India to sign the UPOV 1991 treaty in contravention of its current PVP Act. In the end the stricter control of knowledge and technology is going to adversely affect women, because the whole issue boils down to the household level. Women, who usually cannot move around easily and remain stuck in the agriculture sector, will have to bear the brunt of these new developments.

Maglin Peter speaking on “Women in Fisheries” stated that hers was an activist account. During 1960s women were involved all aspect of work related to fishing. But gradually after the Indo-Norwegian project was implemented, there was a change in the structure of workforce in the industry, whereby the industry became male dominated. Also, there exists gender inequality in wages. While fishing-related issues are taken into account in local policy making, issues related to women are not looked into. Fishing is the main job in coastal Kerala. The main actors in the industry are at harbour and they are unable to influence directly as they connect through intermediaries.

Several fishing investment projects and joint venture projects have been put in place to promote foreign direct investment in the industry. Therefore, strategies should be chalked out to resolve the problems in the industry; engagement with policy makers and politicians should take place for the development of the industry. The above problems along with food crisis, and environmental crisis such as climate change and natural disaster, have been instrumental in denying the right to life.

Rohan Mathews (Intercultural Resources) and Susana Barria (Intercultural Resources) looked at the fishery sector within the EU-India FTA. Rohan Mathews pointed out that there is need to realise that free trade will create a situation of gender inequality. However, there is gender injustice and patriarchy already in existence. Free trade may have the effect of legitimizing this gender injustice and patriarchy. Women comprise 73.6% of those involved in the fish market activities. In the fishing community, the conventional understanding is that it is the men who go out to fish; women, on the other hand, stay behind and carry out the rest of the fishing activities including household activities.

Post-1950s there is a certain principle that has come to be associated with fisheries—uncertainty of catch. Small fishermen cannot venture out beyond a certain range due to the great danger involved. To cross that line, you needed a certain level of mechanisation. Over-fishing has been responsible for the uncertainty of catch. The interface between the fishermen and the rest of the world are the women. When women go to the fish landing centres, the reduction in the catch would mean that the uncertainty principle gets transferred to the primary purchasers, the women. Women from small villages going to buy from the far-off larger landing centres incur more expenses.

Patriarchal norms can be found in the fishing activity. Household management is the sole responsibility of women. Women also have to travel the whole day to bring in fish. Thus, the contribution of the men has not increased at all. Fishing is a dangerous activity, with lives often lost. Also, fishermen wandering off international waters and inadvertently cross borders have been shot at. Thus the great uncertainty on the land side is matched by this uncertainty in the sea side. What does this do? If an export-oriented regime were brought in, the first principle is the requirement of large quantities of fish. An individual woman then gets excluded from export-oriented regime. So, women gradually move on into allied activities—processing, peeling, curing etc.

Studies show that the condition of women in the landing dockyards is pathetic—marked by extremely low wages and poor accommodation. A free trade agreement, apart from promoting exports also has the effect of impinging on the right of men and women fish workers to live by the beach. The land mafia and sand mafia work in tow with the coastal management. What need to be grasped are the several layers of exclusion taking place for women in the fishing sector. There is an essential patriarchal order existing within the fishing community. Any legislation usually uses the ones oppressed or subjugated towards the lower end of the value chain. The division of labour that exists intrinsically connects with free trade in export-oriented regime, thus further worsening the situations of these women.

Susanna Barria specifically looked at FTAs, in the context of fisheries. These FTAs are part of the export promotion policies of the government, with consequences for the fisheries sector. She highlighted a few things. The first was the question of the pressure on export of natural resources, mainly fish. She referred to John Kurien’s observations about small-scale fisheries in the context of globalisation: the export orientation ensured a higher earning for the fish economy. But the earnings were not equitably distributed among participants. In addition there was a strong need for credit on account of the greater dependency on technology. Hence there is a push for unsustainable higher efficiency in the activities of the fishermen, with a strong impact on the marine ecosystem. The fish catch has been decreasing, with strong impact on the livelihood of the fishing community. Also, when the lucrative export market came into being, the domestic price of fish increased much faster than other prices. This has impact on the fish security perspective. Women are more affected in the process by this decrease in the protein intake. At the policy level, John Kurien proposed a judicious balance between fish for export and fish for domestic consumption. This resonates with the demands of the National fish workers’ federation and the memorandum of the Kerala fish workers’ coordinating committee presented to the UPA government on the ASEAN-India FTA. Both mention that decision taken on import and export of fish should not be made under compulsion of the trade agreement, but after looking at the sector which is producing them.

Another point related to export promotion is the intensive aquaculture. The effect of export-led foreign demand-driven development in this sector has increased the share of intensive monoculture in aquaculture. An example is shrimp: shrimp production is 65% of Indian export of fisheries. Most of the export to Europe is frozen shrimp; this is done in brackish water in intensive monoculture. There is no segregated data to show the present status of male and female employment in aquaculture. Aquaculture gives 3 lakh direct employment and 6 to 7 lakh jobs in ancillary industry. The differences between intensive, semi-intensive and extensive aquaculture must be noted. The traditional aquaculture is extensive in nature. The new practice related to export is intensive or semi-intensive. While women play a substantial role in traditional aquaculture, there are very few women in the intensive monoculture. Thus women are being pushed out of employment. This monoculture also has social and environmental consequences. To ensure high returns large farms in monoculture are becoming capital intensive industries, and privatisation of farmland through land grab, thus increasing displacement and loss of jobs in the agriculture sector, pollution and destruction of mangroves and the coastal systems.

There is a lot of scope for higher development of monoculture shrimp production. If the monoculture intensive development model is widely practised, it can have disastrous consequences. The growth sector also increases the demand of fish meal. The amount of fish which has gone into fish meal as opposed to fish for poor section of society has increased. Thus we have a food security component in this development of aquaculture.

Increase in international trade implies need for more ports—land where merchandise can come in, be processed or re-exported. We have displacement from the coastal communities, and this in the context where the rights of fishing communities over coastal land is not clearly recognised. This can create a lot of coastal tensions. Export-led development also brings in more processing for the re-export of fish: 83.5% of the volume of exports is processed, again taking its toll on the women.

Five points need looking at from the point of view of EU’s interest in fish. First is the issue of technology from the EU. The Norwegian programme was already a question of increasing the use of technology in India. Interestingly, with the decline of fish stock, fishing sustainability has come to the fore. There is a new trend of reducing the catch through selective system. New technologies are patented and the owners are interested in new buyers to earn royalties. Technologies have not really adapted to small-scale fisheries. A genuine interest in sustainable fisheries will give priority to support small-scale fisheries. There is a mismatch between what is proposed as sustainable and what the real sustainability is.

The EU’s interest is also in creating cheap sea-food products for their own markets for meeting its own demand for which it has also reduced its import duties on fish. It is also engaged in many FTA negotiations which ensure diverse sources for the import of fish. So the real benefits for the EU tariff reductions are limited, because the same reductions are being made for other nations. But at the border EU also applies very stringent food safety and technical standards and provides heavy subsidies for the sector. So EU creates a situation of more fish being directed towards its markets but also ensure its borders are not so open, thus retaining the ability to control the prices of its local markets.

Over the last twenty year EU companies have considerably consolidated and they now take on a whole lot of activities, thus challenging the rights of local fishermen over the needs of resources and markets. EU’s fishing fleet is among the biggest in the world. Around 80% of EU territorial waters are over-fished. Thus about 60% of fish in EU comes from outside and is accessed through payment of fees. The government’s subsidies, estimated at 15 to 20 million dollars per year, promote excess fishing capacity. Seeking the right to access other territorial waters without paying is EU’s way of exporting its overfishing problem to others.

The EU’s average tariff on fishing products is 10.6% and India’s is 30% indicating a greater commitment from the EU. The question of the efficiency of an exclusionary list in the case of import surge has been raised by different NGOs and organisations, and the fact that previous experiences have shown that you cannot really know what will be exported later, before the free trade agreement. In the case of Sri Lanka, new crops were started important after the agreement were signed. Cheap substitutes that can displace your local fish, and that you have an inbuilt agenda in the exclusion list which says that items have to be reduced over time, all impinge on policy space. You are then in a position where you can’t react fast to what is happening in the international market.

India already has an access to the EU fish market. Technical standards, food safety standards conditions mean that you don’t have any guarantee to export. India is agreeable to the food safety standards in the export market, but it has no provision to follow the same for the domestic market. So, it is really a question of being acceptable for another market. There is also the issue of producing a certificate of traceability—which boat caught which fish and by whom. The cost of meeting these standards are high. The final burden will fall on the fish workers.

Investment is another important aspect of free trade agreements. Foreign companies can come in without registration, application or complying to other regulations which are in place now. The new marine fisheries regulation which is coming doesn’t differentiate between the sizes of fishing vessels or fishing history which could have ensured that small traditional fishermen and women fish workers would have preferential access to the natural resources they need for their livelihood. It thus creates a regulation which is more compatible with the EU-India FTA. Many parts of the agreement refers to government activities, and setting the terms of government aid, state trading companies, pushing the government activities into commercial line. There is no clarity on how this would impact the entities like the cooperatives of the fish workers, and the long-term implications of these types of policies. One of the provisions of Competition Policy, which the EU wants to include in the EU-India FTA, prohibits any public aid which distorts competition by favouring the production of certain goods.

In the discussion that followed, a participant added one point to what had been said in the presentation: about opening up of FDI to retail trade. It has an implication for the labour and the vendors. Malls are coming up and vendors are being evicted. The livelihood of a large number of people, particularly in the coastal areas, is affected by this. A question pertained to that of the India-ASEAN FTA, where, although the government of India signed it, Kerala refused to do so. How is this possible? Maglin Peter responded to this comment by saying that in Kerala there is an alliance between the independent fish workers’ union and the political party trade unions. They were the first to raise serious alarm when the India-ASEAN FTA came about. Despite the FTA being a national level agreement with external parties, they managed to get the Kerala government to write against it. There is a need for several state governments to act on this. On the issue of who owns the sea, the fishing community is beginning to assert their traditional rights on the use of the sea. The chair, Jaya Mehta, also pointed out that the Union government cannot continue to engage in unilateral negotiations without taking the consent of the Parliament or state governments. Rohan Mathews, responding to the fishing communities, said that not only are the traditional community rights denied but others are coming and encroaching upon their very fundamental space. Susana Barria, in her response to the question on competition policy, said it is mainly looking at the sectors related to the government, state-owned companies, government trading enterprises or monopolies from the private sector. The regulation extends to how governments aids have to be managed. On the question of the government’s subsidies to the fishermen, she said subsidies are given for boats, nets, kerosene etc. How much of it reaches those concerned is another matter. Linu Mathew Philip interjected to say that fisheries come under the NAMA process. It is under WTO that actionable subsidies for fisheries make a real difference.

      

Session on “Impacts of Free Trade Policy on Manufacturing”

Chaired by Sunanda Sen (Visiting Professor, ISID), the speakers were Indrani Mazumdar (Centre for Women’s Development Studies), and Bansari Nag (Gender and Trade Initiative). Speaking on “Women in the Manufacturing Industry”, Indrani Mazumdar looked into women's work and employment in the era of trade liberalisation, particularly in the manufacturing sector as compared to national level to test the hypothesis that ‘trade liberalisation leads to feminisation of work force’. She restricted her analysis to two export-oriented industries, namely garment and electronic industries in urban areas. This paper depicted the overall employment situation for women in rural and urban areas according to usual principal status (UPS) and usual principal and subsidiary status (UPSS). According to UPS and UPSS, overall women employment has marginally declined from 23.4 per cent to 23.1 per cent and 32.8 per cent to 29.9 per cent in respective categories during 1993-94 to 1999-2000. But during 1999-2000 to 2004-05, it has slightly improved to 24.2 per cent and 32.7 per cent in the respective categories. The rising share of subsidiary status work is characterising the casualisation of women workforce. A similar trend is observed in urban areas, but the share of female employment in there is much lower as compared to the all-India level. It has marginally increased from 12.1 per cent to 13.5 per cent by UPS and 15.5 per cent to 16.5 per cent by UPSS during 1993-94 to 2004-05. The casualisation of female workforce is driven by increasing self-employment with falling share of casual work. A small increase in the share of self-employment in urban areas is registered during 1993-94 to 2004-05 (from 45.8 per cent to 47.7 per cent).    click here to read the presentation

Then she looked into the share of paid and unpaid workers in the self-employment category in urban areas. There are two major kinds of workers, namely Own Account Workers (OAW) and those who worked as helper in household enterprise (unpaid family worker) (WHHE). OAWs are generally piece rate workers, e.g. Bidi workers, and WHHE are those who work on their family linked enterprises on an unpaid basis. The share of the former in women’s self-employment in manufacturing has gradually increased from 52 per cent in 1993-94 to 54 per cent in 2004-05, while the share of the latter has steadily declined from 47 per cent to 45 per cent during the same period in urban areas. The real wage rate for women declined irrespective of educational status. She called it distress-driven employment generation. The share of agriculture in urban women’s self employment has declined at a much faster rate than increase in share of manufacturing during the same period. The increase in women’s employment in urban areas is dominated by low-skilled work such as employment in private houses during 1999-2000 to 2004-05.

Electronics industry: In the pre-liberalisation era, women’s employment grew at a much faster rate and the quality of employment was decent. This was because of increasing employment in the public sector and the public sector providing social securities to its employees. In the economic reforms of 1991, the worst affected was urban women’s employment in the electronic industry; it was almost stagnant and quality of employment declined. In the 1990s, the Information Technology (IT) Act under the WTO (World Trade Organisation) reduced the import duties on electronic products to zero, in the process destroying domestic production. Besides, domestic producers were badly affected by multinational companies (MNCs) through increasing foreign direct investments (FDI) in the industry. As a result, the employment base has shrunk, leading to shrinking number of those employed. Moreover, a lot of sub-contracting jobs has worsened the quality of jobs.

Garment industry: Almost all the manufacturing units are Indian owned and the export volume of the product is significant. In the post-liberalisation period due to the legalising of contract labour, female workers at assembly line and male trained tailors lost out their jobs. This is an international buyer-driven industry and the quota ceiling on export by buyer countries creates serious problems. The report of a Special Study Group (2005) showed that increasing competition in the international market due to liberalisation, led to the outsourcing of jobs to countries with cheap labour. Moreover, female home-based work shifted to factories, resulting in the casualisation of work and increase in regular employment.

Despite the distinction between the two industries, women’s employment goes in the same negative direction, whatever the principle applied. In the organised sector, significant wage differential exists across gender in the country, which favours men. But the speaker also argued that she found a proportionate relationship between the share of women in employment and gender based wage disparity. In southern India (Bangalore), there exists higher wage differential with higher share of women in employment; in northern India (Delhi) a totally opposite scenario is observed. Indrani Mazumdar concluded by pointing out that export competitiveness contains the following features: contract labour for perennial work; merchant outsourcing to fabricating; provide 200 days employment with flexible fire and policy; working hours is 60 hours a week instead of 48; and use capital-intensive or labour-saving technologies. All these led to volatility in employment, ruined labour intensive industries, and resulted in larger wage disparity between men and women.

Bansari Nag spoke on “Gender profile in export oriented industries in India”. She brought out a few important points of a study done with the support of Commonwealth Secretariat in collaboration with the Ministry of Commerce. Whenever there was a discussion of a gender-sensitive trade policy, the one recurrent theme was the lack of data related to women involved in the sector. The trade data doesn’t speak about the socio-economic profile of the people engaged in these sectors. So, the study tried to identify some of the export-oriented sectors and relate them with the unit level data of the National Sample Survey. They then try to see if there can be a linkage and profile the men and women engaged in these sectors, their backgrounds and the kinds of problems they face.    click here to read

Women the world over are getting more and more employment but at the same time are also exploited. The link between liberalisation and women’s development through employment and poverty eradication depends significantly on the growth of the informal sector. The objective is to scrutinise the nature of work, status of women and to understand how women are engaged in the value chain in terms of concentration and various occupations within the industries, and to estimate wage differentials and mode of payment.

The methodology followed was to identify the export-oriented industries, which is a difficult process. The study selected fishing, mining, manufacture of fruit products, manufacture of textiles, wearing apparels etc. The study also considered a few of the agricultural sub-sectors, going down to the 5-digit analysis code trying to locate the workforce in these sectors.

The 22 sectors taken consists more than 55% of the working women in the country. Large numbers of women are own-account workers—they are self-employed without hiring any labour, but are also into partnerships. This is because the government gives concessions to units belonging to women. There is an increase in mining and lead products and a drop in women own-account workers is visible in food and beverages, tobacco, wearing apparels, chemical products, hospital services etc. In some sectors such as oilseeds, textiles, apparels, chemical products and hospital activities the percentage of female employment increased post-2000. High concentration of female workers is noticed in tobacco where 74% of workers engaged are women; and tea where women constitute 47% of the work force. Sub-sectors like value-added courier services, telecommunication services are attracting a lot of women. In computer and related services, women are concentrated in software development, data processing, data maintenance post-2000.

The findings show that there is a declining trend of female unpaid family work in agriculture excluding tea. This is seen in comparison to the rise of own-account workers in the same sector. In agriculture, there is a rising trend of regular wage workers—those who do not have a work contract for a particular period, but have been working for a comparatively longer period of time. In the textile sector, large increase in regular wage employment is observed. The alarming drop in regular salaried employment in sectors like hotels and restaurants, air transport, post and courier is replaced by a significant rise of casual workers.

Large increase in casualization is seen in agriculture, mining, fishing, beverages, chemicals, plastics etc. Large increase in female casual workers is observed in wearing apparels and hospitals, but in the former this rise is matched by the decline of male casual labourers. So, it can be argued that more regular male employment in the wearing apparel sector has come with more female casual employment. In mining, there is an alarming increase of child workers for the last six or seven years. The other sectors with high incidence of child labour are textile, publishing and printing, manufacture of furniture, fishing and agriculture. There is huge decline in the number of casual workers in the agriculture sector; the fall in the percentage of female casual workers has been replaced by the rise in percentage of own-account workers and unpaid family workers. This indicates that the vulnerability of the workers remains, and the fall in the percentage of casual employment is of little importance. Similar is the trend in manufacturing sectors; female casual employment fell from 93% to 3% in the 2004-05 but the own-account workers and unpaid family workers rose from zero to 96%. According to the ILO, the indicator of vulnerable employment includes the sum of own-account workers and contributing family workers, i.e. unpaid family work as a share of total employment. Contributing family worker and own-account workers are less likely to have formal work arrangement and often carry a higher economic risk, therefore constitutes vulnerable forms of employment. So, if the proportion of vulnerable workers is sizeable, it may be an indication of widespread poverty.

In the face of liberalisation, we are seeing wide-scale poverty in the sectors mentioned above. The poverty connection arises because workers in the vulnerable status lack the social protection and safety nets to guard them against times of low economic demand and are often incapable of generating sufficient savings for themselves and their families of offset these times.

So, globalisation and trade liberalisation do not automatically eliminate the existing inequalities in access to resources, power and decision making between men and women in the society. The study shows that wage inequality between men and women has increased in the sectors just mentioned. Females’ access to social security is still very low. Casual workers in cash crops have come down and have been replaced by only the own-account workers and unpaid family workers. International trade has opened the doors for employment in some sectors, but there are huge costs involved in terms of vulnerable employment and rising inequality. Women’s employment is still large temporary and underpaid.

During the open floor discussion, various questions were asked to the participants by the audience, as well as the chairperson. Does technology displace more women than men? Is it so that if wages get more equalised, women are ejected from the workforce? Is volatility of job interval growing? Is liberalisation leading to creation of various kinds of sub-contracting work? Is liberalisation resulting in the feminisation of the work force? Which industry will be promoted? Indrani Mazumdar responded by asserting that the question relating to feminisation of the workforce is nothing but an erratic statement. She felt that liberalisation does not help women on the employment front; higher wage parity is associated with lower levels of female employment though it has its regional context as well; sub-contracting is rising in various forms namely, global large-scale manufacturing outsourcing (US-based contractor, e.g. Dell), consumer manufacture at local level except IT, MNCs' subcontracting vending companies etc. The fact that women are confined to household is challenged by women’s rights groups, so employment is crucial to free women.

Session on “The Impact of Free Trade Policy on Services”

The Chair, Kavaljit Singh (Public Interest Research Group), pointed out three critical issues related to India’s push for services liberalisation. One reason, he said, is that 53.7% of India’s GDP (2008) comes from the services sector. India’s services exports for 2008 is 90 billion, out of which IT and software sector alone contributed for 46 billion. There is a strong thinking in the Indian trade policy circle that in manufacturing, in agriculture we cannot compete internationally, but on services—particularly in IT and software services—we have an edge. So there is a quid pro quo policy at work here. This thinking, however, is fundamentally flawed for the following reasons: a) should the IT sector benefit at the cost of millions of workers in other sectors, and b) what is good for IT services may not be good for other services. In IT services, we have a trade surplus but in other services such as banking, retail services India has trade deficits. To further liberalise trade in services is therefore to increase imports; so the gains from the IT sector will be replaced by the huge imports in other services. Moreover, not all services are the same. Banks are not like IT services. If a big bank in Mumbai collapses, other banks—sound as they may be—will be affected to prevalent inter-bank lending. There are systemic risks involved in liberalising banking services, unlike other services. Another point to be noted is the dearth of data on services. Data on cross-border trade and investment in services are lacking; hence, we cannot make out the real cost and benefits of services liberalisation. Analysis of gender dimension of liberalisation of trade in services is even more difficult. Whatever data is there is outdated. What we need is a timely data on what is really happening in the services sector.

Speaking on the topic of “EU-India FTA impact on Services” Ranja Sengupta said the services sector provides two kinds of opportunities for women. One is the access to basic services and the other is employment. Since access to services had been discussed in the morning session (banking, health, water) she concentrated on the gender related employment aspects of services trade liberalisation. She pointed out that the services sector provides about 12.6% of the total employment for women. Both health and education have a pretty high proportion of women workers. Because of the large size of the retail sector employment, a low proportion of women still translate into huge number of women employed in absolute terms. As far as female employment in rural and urban areas are concerned, education and retail are the two strong sectors. Studies show that there is lot of scope for women in rural services. The female share of entrepreneurship in the services sector is also very low.    click here to read the presentation

The critical segment in services, as in manufacturing, is the informal sector. She focussed attention on services with high proportion of informal women workers. Construction is a significant absorber of female unorganised workers. Retail is also another major employer. The size of waste management is quite small, but there are important issues related to women that need to be looked at.

The services sector has definitely gained from trade liberalisation. At 58%, it receives the highest share of FDI. But the sector represents the greatest inequality. Moreover, not all services are doing well. As far as the EU-India FTA is concerned, impact studies predict hardly any gain in commodity production. In agriculture, there is no gain in market share. In manufacturing, some gain will be there only in textile and garments. However India is expected to open these up for gains in services. But will everyone gain within the services sector, given that it is skill-based? Can everyone acquire skill? Skill is this great divide, preventing labour moving freely from sector to sector. We also need to explore whether employment will really increase and if so what kind of employment? We need to look at the role of FDI. Is it labour saving? If it goes into labour-intensive sectors and replaces labour, then it doesn’t benefit workers. Finally, we need to ask whether women workers benefit proportionately.

The IT sector, which is growing, represents only 3% of urban women’s employment. So, it is not going to provide large employment for women. EU has major interest in transport, financial sector including banking, business sector and retail. But EU’s FDI is largely urban-biased and labour saving. Hence, expected employment may not materialise. Restrictions in India in the services sector are much higher than in the EU. What it means is that even if India gains access to EU markets, we will have to open up much more. This entry of EU into India’s service sector will also mean that informal workers cannot be protected if labour saving FDI takes place. She went onto to give three examples in this context; retail, constriction and waste management.

The retail sector represents 9.5% of total urban women’s employment and 16.63% of urban women services employment. Even in the rural areas, it has a large share. It is a kind of work which can be combined very well with household activities. There is some constraint on FDI in the retail sector, but the government has been continuously increasingly the limit for foreign equity in the retail sector. The smaller retail sector is already facing competition from corporate retail. A study by ICRIER said that 50% of small retailers surveyed reported lower sales. Stores located within 2 to 5 km radius of supermarkets witnessed a 16% decline in sales, whereas stores which were not near supermarkets increased their sales by 2%. Women are already feeling the pressure in the retail sector. The share of retail in female employment in services both in the rural and urban areas has been falling. Within the retail sector, female employment as a percentage of total employment has also fallen. The fall is sharper in urban areas. There is more and more informalisation in the retail sector.

In the construction sector, 13.6% of workers are women. It accounts for 4.4% of urban female employment and for 38.9% of unorganised female casual non-agricultural workers. The Arjun Sengupta report showed that 72% of casual workers in this sector earn less than the minimum industrial wages of Rs.66 per day; for men, it is 38%. The sector is already quite open to FDI inflows; increased mechanisation has replaced labour. Female employment growth in the construction sector has fallen. In waste management, women have a high share in employment, 20.71% in urban and 59.07% in rural waste workforce. This sector also represents highly informal, unprotected and especially unhealthy working conditions for highly unskilled female workforce. They have no policy protection from the government.

India is interested in the IT sector and in Mode 4, which is the movement of people. Mode 4 is an area of interest as women account for 35.7% and 60% of employment in health sector and of domestic maids. But in the EU-India FTA, the EU is very cagey on commitments and on removing entry barriers. Language, culture and geographical proximity are the main determinants of entry into EU. The gains in Mode 4 are likely to remain limited to IT professionals working for Indian units set up in the EU.

Maitreyi Krishnan speaking on “Waste Management”, pointed out that solid waste management (SWM) is an obligatory and mandatory function of the state, devolved on to the urban area local bodies by the Constitution of India along with public health, and sanitation conservancy. According to the Karnataka Municipal Corporations Act 1976, the obligatory functions of the city corporations, include (Section 58): a) watering and cleaning of all public streets and public places in the city and the removal of all sweepings; b) collection, removal, treatment and disposal of sewage and rubbish and the preparation of compost manure from such sewage; and, c) construction, maintenance and cleaning of drains and drainage works and of public privileges, water closets and urinals. In this regard, the Commissioner is to provide depots or places for the temporary deposit of rubbish, provide for the daily surface-cleaning of all public streets and the removal of the sweeping and the contents of all depots provided for the temporary deposit of rubbish.    click here to read

The speaker cited the case of SWM in Bangalore, where the amount of waste produced daily is around 3,000-5,000 tonnes per day. Workers employed fall into the following categories: permanent workers employed directly by the corporation; daily wage workers; and contract workers employed through contractors. There are 4,000 permanent workers and 10,903 contract powrakarmik under 30 contractors in the municipal corporation. Over 80% of the workers are women. Almost all of them are Madigas, a sub-caste among Dalits and this is a hereditary profession for them.

In the municipal corporation, there is a substantial difference between the working conditions of permanent powrakarmik and that of contract powrakarmik. While permanent powrakarmik enjoys job as well as social security as government employees, there is no security for contract powrakarmik. While formers receive wages ranging from Rs. 4500 to Rs. 7000 per month, the latter receives much lower wages ranging from Rs. 1800 to Rs. 2000. Permanent powrakarmiks enjoy holidays as per government rules, but contract powrakarmiks get only 2 half days off in a week. While the permanent powrakarmik can avail the amenities and facilities (canteens and dining hall, rest rooms, provision of drinking water, latrines and urinals, washing facilities, first aid, creches etc), contract powrakarmik cannot approach the court in the absence of documentary evidence. Moreover, the easy termination process rules out collective bargaining.

The poor working conditions of contract powrakarmik have adversely affected their health. They suffer from respiratory tract infections, and are prone to communicable disease like gastrointestinal disorders, diarrhoea, infection, skin diseases, and jaundice. They are prone to occupational injuries because they constantly come in contact with sharps objects, needles, metals, wood, etc. They also have problems with their back and the spine due to constant bending. These problems have been exacerbated by the lack of protective equipments that minimizes these impacts and the absence of medical facilities or benefits.

According to Maitreyi Krishnan, statutory duties and responsibilities of a principal employer are: a) if the wages to be paid are not paid by the Contractor, the principal employer shall pay the unpaid amount to the worker, and recover the same from the Contractor b) the principal employer shall appoint their representatives to be present at the time of disbursement of wages and c) if any amenity to benefit the contract labour employed in an establishment is not provided by the contractor within the prescribed time, such an amenity shall be provided by the principal employer. The government's argument in favour of private SWM is as follows. Increase in population leads to rise in volume of garbage and the employment of more under SWM would require more money. The problem of non-availability of money is resolved through contracting. Earlier, every worker received Rs. 2,400 per month and about 10,000 workers were employed. Hence, the total expenditure was Rs. 2.50 crores. But now 30 contractors are doing the job in lieu of 7 crores every month. The money that would have ordinarily gone to the powrakarmika is now being paid to the Contractor.

The Report of the Committee on the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions of Sweepers and Scavengers recommended the improvement of working, service, social conditions by various means and for political representation. Another Report of the Committee constituted by the Supreme Court of India on SWM in Class 1 cities in India recommends privatization of SWM; SWM service be kept out of the purview of the Contact Labour Act; supervisors be kept out of the purview of the SC, ST Prevention of Atrocities Act, 1989; to ‘enable the supervisory staff to supervise the work of street sweepers and the labour force employed in collection, transportation, processing and disposal of waste fearlessly and effectively’.

During the Discussion, a participant doubted if India’s trade liberalisation in services under the EU-India FTA is driven by IT for the simple reason that the major IT market is the US and not EU. Therefore, politics not economics that seems to be driving the FTA. Kavaljit Singh clarified that the US market is not expanding. Hence, in the past two years, consistent efforts have been made by NASSCOM and the IT industry to move out of the US to go to the EU. To a question on whether prices in the retail sector would also be affected and what is the impact on women, Ranja Sengupta said that it is an important area to be looked at. There is a need to know what deal women, as consumers, are getting. However, there have been relatively few studies on the price effect across the world, when you look at trade and gender impact. The experience in India shows that big retail chains offer lower prices initially but raise them later. Many have also folded up from the burden of giving high discounts for gaining market access. A participant wanted to know the Supreme Court’s ruling on municipal solid waste management. Maitreyi Krishnan responded by saying that in 2000 a case was filed in the Supreme Court, which eventually led to the passing of a set of rules called the Municipal Solid Waste Management and Handling Rules. These are rules made under the Environment Protection Act which lays down guidelines as to what the role of the Municipal Corporation will be. A committee was also formed which made a series of recommendations talking of the need for public-private partnership. Those rules are in place now. Some of them are being followed but things concerning accidents are ignored. When asked for a list of accidents, municipal officials replied saying that these are contract workers and not their workers. So, there is complete lack of accountability on conditions of workers.



Day 2, 14 November 2009

The second day of the workshop began with a welcome address by Shalini Yog (Heinrich Boell Foundation). She extended gratitude to the panellists for contributing to the programme. She particularly thanked the co-organisers—Centad, Focus on Global South, India, WIDE and Intercultural Resources—for their work and resource inputs. She said, without their commitment, professional approach and personal efforts, the programme would not have been possible.

Speaking on the theme of the consultation, she argued that the connection between economic policies of free trade and attainment of social goals is very important for the purpose of sustainable development. While sustainable development commitments are often referred to in the objectives of trade, the objectives remain at the level of rhetoric and rarely have any overriding powers. She hoped that the second day of the workshop will demystify some of the social development and gender related assumptions of free trade policies and its choices. Social exclusion and political polarisation are rooted today in the modern economy approach, which provides jobs and sources of livelihood to a substantial part of the population and therefore has the ability to affect a lot of lives. Men and women are impacted differently by trade, and in fact women are not a homogeneous group themselves, and therefore trade policies have differential impact on different groups of women. It is imperative that trade treaties take into consideration their impact on women in specific sectors, their locations, and education. Including gender perspectives into trade policies supports integrated approach of economic justice and upholding of democratic values. The second day of the workshop welcomes policy makers and opinion shapers with the objective of facilitating cross-fertilizing of experiences and lessons learnt through sector-specific research on the importance of establishing linkages between free trade, sustainable development and gender justice, to facilitating synergies between governments and CSOs to learn from each other and strengthen their collective perspectives and positions on free trade and its impact on specific sectors, and to advocate and promote a just and equitable trade agenda.

Session on “Gender Implications of Current Trade Policy Making in India: Interaction with Policy Shapers”

This session was divided in two sub-sessions, and was chaired by K.M. Gopakumar (Third World Network). Rajan S. Ratna (Professor, Centre for WTO Studies, New Delhi) said that trade policy when formulated is gender neutral. But by not looking into gender dimensions it is gender blind. Several case studies show that trade impacts men and women differently. India has gender budgeting but there is no gender-based trade policies. Attempts are being made to formulate foreign trade policies by taking into account gender dimensions. There is a need for positive discrimination in the sectors having a strong women’s workforce. There is a positive gender bias in-built in foreign trade policies in the sectors such as textiles, handicrafts, food processing etc. Better facilities aimed at women are required. UNCTAD India has identified products where women have strong presence. In FTA negotiations there is need to protect lines that are vulnerable. As far as the services sector is concerned, the biggest problem is the lack of harmonization.

      

Amarendra Khatua in his speech said when talking about trade and gender especially in South Asian countries and developing countries, the focus should be on the women’s workforce and employment. Otherwise analysis becomes weak and policy prescriptions become vague. He added that trade liberalisation implies growth leading to better allocation of resources, exchange of knowledge, transfer of technology, opening of new markets, and increase in production correlated to increase in employment.

It has been observed that trade liberalisation has differential impacts on the women workforce. Also, trade is not the cause of gender differences, but it may act as the magnifier of existing inequities and disparities. To minimize the negative effect on gender equality, there needs to be synergistic collaboration between the different stakeholders—those working at the grass-root level, trade experts, the trade negotiators and the policy makers. The trade negotiators, the policy makers and those who finally implement these policies need to be educated on the aspects of trade’s gender impacts. Without this, the matrix remains incomplete. At the policy making level, there is a consensus that trade policy instruments should be designed to increase employment opportunities, improve labour conditions, address gender inequality problems, enhance capabilities of women workforce through training and capacity building, and enhance entitlements. Trade negotiations should be directed towards benefiting as large a number of agents of the economy as possible. Amarendra Khatua ended his presentation by making a few suggestions: a) working out gender profile according to tariff lines; b) bottom support; c) gender mainstreaming of policies; d) development of new opportunities; e) export on products which are women’s labour intensive; and f) careful sequencing of trade liberalization.

Rashmi Banga (UNCTAD India) said in India, as in many developing countries, women are at a disadvantage in terms of access to resources right from birth. Male-Female gap in literacy rate in India is 21.59%. Women in India constitute around 48% of the total population, but the work participation rate of females is only 26%. Women are paid on an average 40% lower than men for the same work.     click here to read the presentation

To measure the impact of exports on gender employment, UNCTAD India constructed a comparable trade-industry-gender dataset to identify sectors with higher incidence in gender participation and assess the impact of trade on gender in different sectors through econometric studies and primary surveys. The results show that rise in exports during the period 2003-04 to 2006-07 generated 9.38 million employment for women and 16.60 million for men. Thus although exports generated additional employment for women, it was only 36% of the total additional employment generated. However, the share of females in additional employment generated due to exports exceeds the share of females in existing total employment by nearly 5 percentage points. This suggests that exports may have reduced the gap between male and female employment.

Econometric analysis was used by UNCTAD India to estimate the impact of exports/imports on gender employment in 54 industries over 1999-00 and 2004-05. The study found export intensity has a positive and significant impact on women’s employment and imports have not led to any displacement of women’s employment. But the study also finds that when real wage rate rises, the fall in women’s employment is higher than men.

The primary survey indicated export-related trade growth led to a rise in the informal sector workers, a high percentage of them being women. Casualisation of workforce makes employment vulnerable. Women are also subjected to poor wages and conditions of work. With higher growth of services, even if employment opportunities for women grow at the same rate, the benefits of the growth goes more to males as compared as females. Identified industries with high women’s employment (>35%) are manufacturing, particularly tobacco, apparel, food products, and agriculture and animal husbandry.

Gender assessments could be included in trade policy review mechanisms for countries. Dr. Banga pointed out that the study indicated further research on two areas; casualisation of women’s labour may increase vulnerabilities of the women, and the trade-growth-gender nexus.

Anita Gurumurthy summarised the previous day’s session on “The Impact of Free Trade Policy on Services”. She pointed out that gender disparity in access to resources is an inherent problem. Though women’s work participation rate (WPR) is high at about 45 %, those are most in low productive sectors. Thus, it is necessary to support their livelihoods by providing access to resources. Women’s employment is rising in booming exports led sectors, but those jobs are casual in nature. Significant male-female wage differential exists in low productivity jobs as well as in high skill managerial jobs despite women putting in more efforts. There is no policy to resolve the problem. How should the policy makers formulate trade policies to resolve the above mentioned problems? How does the EU-India FTA have an effect on women, particularly employment aspect? In response, it was said that there is no clear picture of goods and services sectors and women in unorganised sector (e.g. fish vending) because of limited research undertaken in the field. Trade policy cannot solve all gender related problems. Casualisation of women workforce in export led sector is not the problem as it is providing some income, is a view that needs to be questioned. Policy makers now try to identify gender sensitive products and sectors to incorporate them in trade policies but this is not enough in the field of services. Often FTAs are political in nature, and so they do have no linkage with the gains and development perspectives and do not take into account all relevant issues.     Click here to read the presentation

In the second sub-session Christa Wichterich presented the summary of the first day’s session on “Impacts of Free Trade Policy on Manufacturing”, while Susanna Barria presented the summary of the session on “Impacts of Free Trade Policy on Agriculture and Fisheries”. Ranja Sengupta summarised the session on “Access to Natural Resources and Services”.

Anne Stenhammer (UNIFEM), in her presentation said every country before embarking on trade negotiations must be clear that without getting on board, there can be no sustainable economy. She pointed out that trade policy cannot provide the solutions for all gender inequalities. She said women’s employment and self-employment has increased in the export sector. However, it is also true that women are usually hired in the marginal, insecure, lower-paid work including home-based and tertiary job. Another problem is the wage differential between men and women. Such gender inequality affects women’s livelihood. Micro entrepreneurs like home-based workers are poorly equipped to deal with the entry of imports. We need to look on this phenomenon as the combined effect of; a) general social discrimination against women in education, health care, and economic rights; b) the gendered structure of the economy with women being responsible for non-market house work, and caring for children; and, c) gender segmentation with women’s concentration in low-paid jobs. Much more study and analysis is needed to truly understand household-market relations. There is an immediate need for policy and action. She points out two in particular; a) linking social sector and the production sector, and strengthen measures for child care and reproductive work including education and incentive for male employees to do caring and household work, and, b) capacity building of women workers in export-oriented industries.

In the discussion that followed a lot of questions were raised and comments made. A participant felt that Gram Samaj land should be given to the poor and women. At the moment, the land goes to rich men. A day’s work brings in a mere fifty rupees. Farmers do not control the prices of their produce. They are forced to sell off the crop early to pay for debt. This happens because of the lack of bank loans for farmers. Moreover, a failure of crop is equivalent to three years loss—the loss of money invested in the crop, the loss of the year’s money that would have come from selling the crop, and the loss of money needed for investment for the following year. Another participant pointed out that women are more capable as they work the whole day through and come back home to take care of children, but this fact often goes unrecognised. A participant, referring to the lack of representation of women, said UNIFEM could play a role in bringing women together for this task so that policy makers sit up and listen. Anne Stenhammer said UNIFEM’s undertakes policy advocacy in areas such as violence against women, good governance, and economic security.

      

Session on “Free Trade and Democracy”

Venkatesh Nayak (Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative) was the Chair of this session which focussed attention on how consultative and participatory the trade policy mechanism is, especially in the field of free trade agreements. Sukhdev Sharma (European Economic and Social Committee) said that in recent years, the European Union has established formal relations with the majority of the world's countries and regions. At the same time, international relations have opened up to new actors, primarily from civil society, and the international agreements signed by the EU include arrangements on an almost systematic basis aiming to establish dialogue at civil society level. In its capacity as an institutional representative of European organised civil society, the European Economic and Social Committee's role is therefore evolving. The protocol signed with the European Commission in 2005 takes this situation into account by assigning EESC the task of supporting the EU's external activities by conducting a dialogue with the civil society organisations of the non-EU countries and geographical groupings with which the EU has formal relations.

Several opinions on EU-India relations and its members contribute to the framing and implementation of the EU-India Action Plan. Furthermore, at the request of the Indian and European political authorities, since 2001 the EESC has co-organised the EU-India civil society Round Table. Comprising an equal number of EESC members and Indian civil society representatives, the Round Table meets regularly and adopts recommendations for the EU-India Summit. In this way, it helps pave the way towards better mutual understanding between the CSOs on each side.

The EESC's role as a facilitator of a dialogue with civil society and prosperity of the European Union and its people extends beyond the borders of the 25-nation European Union. It is an active participant in an on-going dialogue with the EUROMED (Europe-Mediterranean) partnership countries and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries with whom the EU is linked through the Cotonou Convention. It is also engaged in s with civil society in the Latin American countries, including the Mercosur states, and with India through the India-EU Round Table, as well as with China. Trade will happen with or without FTAs between the EU and India. But when FTA is linked, it is the responsibility of CSOs to promote sustainable development, ensure food availability, capacity building etc in FTAs and above all monitor FTAs.

Barbara Specht (WIDE) highlighted the role of WIDE as a voice and agency seeking to influence European trade. Among others, it seeks to empower women’s organisations, create space to voice their concerns and organise workshops. Trade policy making and democracy is a question that WIDE monitors closely and transparency, accountability, participation – voice and agency - figure prominently on WIDE´s agenda. The corporate capture of the EU trade agenda leads, to policies which center around profit-making and the interest of corporations. Those policies do not work for the majority of the people; and especially not for women given their lack of access to and control over resources, including land, water, credit, women´s lack of access to decision-making and education and training, the existing gendered roles and stereo-types as well as the unfair division of labour, including the artificial separation between productive and reproductive work.    Click here to read the presentation

One of WIDE´s strategy to make EU trade policy more democratic is to expose the undemocratic process around trade policy making and to challenge the corporate capture of EU trade policy. Another strategy is to bring women´s voices and concerns to the center of the debates on economic and social development. WIDE does this by empowering women’s organisations and women’s rights activists to engage in trade policy making on their own terms; and by creating space for them to voice their concerns and claim their rights. She also pointed out that engaging in trade policy making on its own terms was very important for WIDE. She suggested that the civil society consultation” mechanisms set up by the European Commission have received criticism from European CSOs on several grounds; failure to influence trade policy making, inability to question the ideological issues and the lack of transparency and accountability. Another very important task of WIDE is to create public debate on trade policies, its purpose and aims, be it through the media or through engaging in processes furthering outreach.

Kajal Bhardwaj (Independent Consultant) provided a lucid analysis of the laws relevant to FTAs. She mentioned that the judiciary cannot intervene in economic policy affairs. Therefore, even if the government is going to sign an FTA without taking peoples' consent and a public interest litigation (PIL) is registered for affecting publics' economic interest, the judiciary is likely to simply reject the litigation by arguing that economic policy issues do not come under its purview. There is a lot of evidence of PILs registered on economic grounds (particularly development issues) being rejected. She mentioned the cases of the PILs on BALCO, and Narmada Dam. The parliament has no power when it comes to signing FTAs; so, the government can sign them without having to discuss them in parliament. Therefore, the public cannot influence either directly by registering PIL or through their representatives in parliament.

She made the following suggestions for effective intervention in FTAs; a) move court with well thought strategies like showing that the FTA will violate the fundamental rights and b) mobilise people for mass movement against FTAs and keeps government under pressure to think seriously about the common peoples' objections in the FTA.

In the discussion that followed it was pointed out that Parliament has refused to interfere in FTA negotiations. Thus parliament has no role in FTA negotiations. Civil society movements in India should, as is the case in Europe, try to influence FTA negotiations particularly to ensure inclusion of the gender dimension. As treaty negotiations are not transparent, they are not challengeable. Land reform was put in place to provide access to the landless, but in the era of liberalisation, the land reform law has been modified in favour of SEZs, thus adversely affecting the poor. There is a need for a constitutional amendment that will allow both the states and the centre to come together on the same stage to discuss the FTAs. Is using arguments based on aspects other than the economic one, for example on social and development issues, the most effective way to challenge the government in court? In this situation what should be done? What is the procedure to implement laws in favour of women?

Very few NGOs are working to take the matter to court. Before moving court on property issues, it is necessary to have a well thought out strategy, such as filing the case under violation of fundamental rights. But a better strategy is to launch people’s movements rather than moving the judiciary to intervene in the case. Moreover, the judiciary is not the best place as judges are not elected members. On the other hand, the common peoples' voice on economic issues does not reach policy makers through MPs either, as parliament does not have any power to intervene in the matter. It is quite disheartening to see that bodies like the National Development Council never discuss these issues in their meetings.

      

The two-day workshop ended with a vote of thanks by Julia Sherf (Heinrich Boll Foundation). She thanked all those who made the programme possible. She appreciated the broad-based inputs that came in during the two days of the workshop.