100 SOCIAL SCIENTIST The rich countries had for two centuries dominated the international scene. Following the tidal wave of colonial liberation in the post second world war period, the developing countries recognised themselves as the Group of 77. They initiated in the United Nations and in UNCTAD a wide series of negotiations with the West aimed at establishing a New International Economic Order (NIEO). I need not go into the details of all the initiatives that the Croup of 77, as it came to represent the developing countries, launched in that Golden Age (1966-1980) of the south's entry on the world scene. That was the age we could be proud of. But public memories are so short that there is a danger of forgetting them altogether. This background is pertinent to what is happening now. The Uruguay Round is in a sense an act of turning the negotiations on the NIEO upside down. The developing countries had gone through a disastrous decade during the 1980s. They had been burdened by falling export prices caused by recessions in the West, severe balance of payments crises, budgetary deficits and heavy external debt. They were forced to borrow from both the IMF and the World Bank, and submit to their structural adjustment programmes. (What a historical hijacking of names this was, since the very notion of structural change was the contribution of the developing countries). This, however, is not the place to discuss the South's crisis. Taking advantage of the difficulties of the South, of its despair and disarray, rich countries like proverbial money lenders, siezed the initiative in the 1980s. They opened a new front by slamming the door on the North-South negotiations to establish the NIEO. It was the period when the growing movement towards accommodation and development co-operation between the North and South was destroyed. The Third World was in disarray. The rich countries started their own offensive. They changed both the stage and the substance of the North-South negotiations. Over 50 countries, desperate for foreign loans, had to accept the IMF's and the World Bank's structural adjustment programmes. It was against this background that the conservative governments in the West launched the Uruguay Round of Negotiations in GATT. The United Nations and UNCTAD, the universal fora for the North-South, were dumped and GATT, an obscure organisation till then, was reasserted. GATT, which was upto that time a small, sleepy organisation, housed in its make-shift quarters in the shadow of UNCTAD and the Palais des Nations, was made by the West the central body for most far-reaching negotiations. It is important to recall that while this shift in the stage was being made, the North-South negotiations had come a long way. The revision of the Paris Convention to bend it to serve the development interests of South countries, the Code of Conduct on technology, and the code for transnational corporations had made considerable progress