Sitting awkwardly by the seaside, surrounded by journalists and cameramen, Union Commerce Minister Murasoli Maran was trying hard to look happy. It was Wednesday evening and the fourth ministerial conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) at Doha in Qatar was in its final moments. Maran had just rushed out of the plenary hall to catch a flight to Delhi. "We have made significant gains," he told journalists, among whom were reporters from the now well known Al Jazeera Television, Reuters and BBC.

THE LONG MARCH: Maran (centre), Commerce Secretary Probir Sengupta (left) and Special Secretary Nipendra Misra at the WTO meet

Maran's optimism stemmed from the fact that the WTO had assured India that negotiations on the issues of investment, competition policy, transparency in government purchase and trade facilitation (collectively called new issues) would not start till 2003. Even then, an explicit consensus of all 144 members of the WTO would be taken before launching the negotiations. But what Maran was claiming to be a victory was actually damage control.

India was stoutly opposed to negotiations on the new issues under the WTO. The reason: India does not consider them to be trade issues. The Commerce Ministry has consistently stated that investment and competition (policies to prevent abuse of free market) are matters of a country's domestic policies on which no multi-party (multilateral in WTO lingo) negotiation is possible. The same logic applies to negotiations on transparency in government purchase and trade facilitation. "The WTO is trying to be a super government. It is invading the sovereignty of nations," Maran had lashed out a week before the Doha conference began on November 9. Yet the final declaration of the conference stated that WTO members "recognise the case for a multilateral framework" of policies on all the four issues. The question is no longer whether these issues should be negotiated, but when they will be negotiated. India has only been able to postpone the inevitable.

Environment was another battle where India had to retreat. The declaration accepted the need to "enhance the mutual supportiveness of trade and environment" and proposed to start negotiations after the fifth ministerial conference of the WTO, which will be held in 2003. The scope of this agreement is limited right now, but as trade policy expert Bibek Debroy points out, "This is the sharp edge of the wedge." In trade negotiations what begins as a small and innocuous discussion blows into a major issue. What is known today as the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (trips)-the law that governs patents, among other things-had originally figured in international trade talks as a proposal to fight counterfeit products. The fear that environment standards will eventually be used to impose restrictions against exports of developing countries is, therefore, genuine.

One cause for India's apparent defeat on critical issues is its excessive reliance on support from developing countries. In varying degrees, countries across Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America had promised support to India on most issues. But through the six-day conference, most countries struck their own deals with the developed world and deserted India.

Some countries from the Caribbean and Africa gave up their opposition to investment and environment proposals after securing a waiver on restrictions on banana exports to the European Union. Some South-East Asian countries traded their support to India's stand by settling a deal on tuna exports. Even a group of Like Minded Countries (LMG)-a 14-country group with India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Jamaica and Dominican Republic among its members-turned into a group of Unlike Minded Countries by the end of the conference.