STATEMENT TO THE GROUP OF MINISTERS 107
Dunkel Draft indeed goes even further. It provides for GATTs collaboration with IMF and the World Bank in promoting, monitoring and enforcing the market based growth strategy for India. The trinity (IMF, World Bank and GATT) will then take charge of our policies for domestic development. Instead of home rule, we will have foreign rule—in a word, 're-colonisation*. These three will undermine our sovereignty. The decision-making processes for India's development will be externalized, even when some of the measures are introduced in an Indian voice. The age of colonial liberation will be replaced by the hegemony of development countries.
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS
In conclusion, I wish to underline that there is no basis on which the government can accept the Dunkel proposals without serious modification in them. The National Working Group on Patent Laws has mobilized our scientists, economists, lawyers, journalists, members of Parliament, leaders of political parties, non-governmental organizations and industrial bodies. They have asked the government repeatedly to take the people, the Parliament, the political parties and the press into confidence. To all these demands, the government has so far turned a deaf ear. The country is in disarray.
The silence of the government raises some very fundamental doubts. It would seem as if the government believes that it will be able to accept Dunkel proposals without strong domestic opposition. This will not be the case. It is time that the government informs GATT in no uncertain terms that India cannot accept the document on a 'take-it-or-leave-it' basis. It should specifically indicate the areas of India's disagreement with the Dunkel Draft Text. These will have to be renegotiated because they adversely affect the very livelihood and development interests of our people. India is too large a country to be dictated by foreign pressures, and the imposition of mechanical deadlines dictated by the calendar of American elections. Our long-term interests cannot be staked on such a flimsy time table. Ours is a large sovereign democratic country. We are a part of the international community of nations. We must therefore call for an intensive national debate on all the issues, both in the Parliament and outside.
Time is of the utmost importance. It is running out. The people, parliamentarians, the political parties and the press are all becoming restless. There is a massive upsurge of resentment against the exercise of the pressure from external institutions—the IMF, the World Bank and GATT. Our own government is echoing the voice of these outsiders. It is becoming a prisoner of these pressures, insensitive to the people's concerns. The GATT has now joined the IMF and the World Bank. We therefore urge the government to make it clear that it is the people of India, and not the external trinity, which is in charge here at home.