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India's Entanglement in the Global Economy

 

            The deficiencies of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) for less developed countries, such as India, can be seen in the preamble of the agreement. As stated, GATT promotes the "reciprocal and mutually advantageous arrangements directed to the substantial reduction of tariffs and other barriers to trade" (GATT, 1986, preamble). Additionally, the General Most-Favoured-Nation Treatment states that: "any advantage, favour, privilege or immunity granted by any contracting party to any product originating in or destined for any other country shall be accorded immediately and unconditionally to the like product originating in or destined for the territories of all other contracting party to any product originating in or destined for any other country shall be accorded immediately and unconditionally to the like product originating in or destined for the territories of all other contracting parties." (GATT,1986, p. 2).
             The preamble and initial provision within GATT articulate an inherent inequality which puts developing countries at a significant disadvantage because it demands that every member country be treated equally, when in reality developing countries, as the name suggests, are unequal economically and if we are to benefit similarly from this agreement as developed countries, we must be allotted special treatment. As Kamal Saggi, articulates in his work Tariffs and the Most Favored Nation Clause, "individual countries have no incentive to adopt MFN and the less efficient a country's technology, the more it loses from adopting MFN" (Saggi, 2001, p. 27). .
             A similarly injurious factor of GATT is its particular position on agricultural subsidies. As a rule, GATT accepted that export subsidies could prove to be harmful to the economic community and in Article XVI the agreement states that "contracting parties shall cease to grant either directly or indirectly any form of subsidy on the export of any product other than a primary product" (GATT, 1986, p.


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