 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we are in conversation with Professor Bishu Jidhar. He teaches economics at the Jawaharlal Nair University and he has been one of the people in India who followed trade negotiations and negotiations within the World Trade Organization since its inception. And we will be discussing with him the issue of e-commerce which is going to be one of the prominent discussion points at the WTO ministerial meeting which is happening the end of the year in Buenos Aires. Welcome to NewsClick. Thank you. Why is e-commerce in this ministerial meeting seen as such a prominent issue? What are the motivations behind making this a major discussion point at the ministerial? Let me start from the very beginning. E-commerce is something that is not new to the WTO. It was introduced as an issue in 1998, the ministerial, the second ministerial conference. And then a work program was agreed. And one of the things that was agreed in 1998 was that there will not be any import duties imposed on electronic transmissions. Now if you remember the world 20 years back, we didn't know that the world of internet is going to take this kind of form, it's going to expand and it's going to have such a powerful... So what you're basically saying is that the e-commerce in 1998 is very different from the e-commerce in 2017. Absolutely. And what was agreed in 1998, and if you want to go down the same path in terms of letting e-commerce take place without governments imposing any import duties on the products, then the ramifications are very different. So there appears to be an attempt to define e-commerce to include a lot of things. So how has this definition changed and what is being proposed currently? Over a period of time we have seen the entire definition of e-commerce change. And this definition has also been sort of accepted by major organizations like the OECD. But not in the WTO as yet. Not yet in the WTO. And the OECD definition of e-commerce actually reflects the reality of e-commerce as we know today. So what does it include? It includes virtually all kinds of cross-border movements of goods taking place through this particular platform of e-commerce. So the Amazons and the Alibaba's of the world what they are doing today is all part of e-commerce. Would it be correct to say that e-commerce as is being defined now straddles the world of services as well as of goods? No, certainly sir. You have a bundle of services in e-commerce, backing e-commerce which is virtually a platform for trade in goods. And that is what is happening now that a bunch of countries not more than 25-30 countries who are backing the inclusion of e-commerce in the WTO and are demanding the same kind of terms to be introduced or to be brought in today which was introduced in 1998. So continuation of the 1998 situation where e-commerce was not taxed but now in a situation where e-commerce embraces a lot of other areas. Is that what we are looking for? Absolutely. So now we are virtually looking at a situation where e-commerce will bring in a comprehensive trade liberalization. So the way I look at e-commerce, the discussions in e-commerce today in the WTO, I see it as an extension of this attempt at liberalizing trade completely. So no holds barred liberalization. And so all the discussions that we were having till now under the Doha development agenda that market opening will be calibrated, will be calibrated looking at the interests and the abilities of different countries to liberalize their trade given their domestic sensitivities. All these issues are being put in the back burner. When you have liberalized trade and if I may add, which are the countries which are pushing for e-commerce not to be taxed? This is an agenda of global capital very clearly and today you know that global capital is not a north-south issue because there are countries in the south which have become big votaries of global capital, China being the most important. And China has actually become the leader of this whole pack of countries which want rapid trade liberalizations. And China also has a major interest because Alibaba is now fast becoming the largest e-commerce company now. So for a country like India, what does it really mean if you do not tax transactions through e-commerce? Is it a huge loss for us in terms of sovereign taxes that otherwise should come to us? The first is that what you mentioned that there is going to be no tax on e-commerce which means that there are revenue implications. Now it's a fact that customs revenue has become a smaller part of the total revenue but it still is an important source of revenue for the government. So it will be very difficult for India to actually adjust to a situation where it just let's go customs revenue that's number one. But the more important implication is it will come from trade liberalization. Now as you know that the government of India has been trying to sort of revive the manufacturing sector. Now this of course hasn't really worked and if you liberalize completely then there's going to be an impact on the manufacturing, you know this revival agenda. In the run up to the ministerial are there countries which have explicitly opposed the attempt by the developed countries in China to not tax e-commerce transactions? Yeah we have you know we are told that government of India has also opposed and this is what we hear from our officials that in the discussions we have opposed e-commerce. Of course we do not have any evidence that India has supported. Nothing in form of a position paper till now you know we may do it tomorrow who knows. The most important group which has opposed e-commerce and has very good reasons given very good reasons to oppose e-commerce is the African group. And let me also tell you that the supporters of e-commerce are actually straddling the developed and the developing world. So although there is something called supporters of e-commerce. They call themselves friends of e-commerce. So they call them friends of e-commerce and the friends of e-commerce very interestingly are talking about a developing dimension of e-commerce in which they say that the medium the micro small and medium enterprises the MSMEs they will benefit from e-commerce. But this is an interesting trend isn't it that we have seen it earlier for example in the trade in services agreement that was still going on where the developed countries then recruited developing countries who call themselves the friends of TISA in this case there. So this is a seems to be a trend in trade negotiations that the developed countries get together and then they recruit by whatever means smaller countries. Yeah but this time you know I've it seems that some of these developing countries have now got habituated to sort of back the developed countries. The the worrying you know part in all this is that you know countries like India used to focus on the development dimension of trade liberalization. And they always argued and we all argued we you know sort of backed Indian government in that position saying that you know the the development aspirations particularly of the smaller players should not be sacrificed in the name of trade liberalization. Now this you know platform the development platform has actually been hijacked by these guys. So if we can finish with the question which is perhaps a larger issue that in the WTO you had a situation earlier when under the leadership of countries such as India, Brazil there was an attempt to bring together the developing countries to try to stall or oppose issues that the US or Europe would bring forth. But that kind of a solidarity that kind of an attempt seems to now have gone into the back burner and it is now the developed countries were in a position to recruit smaller and poorer countries for their agenda. So do you see as a on a long in the long run this is a major threat to the whole multilateral agenda of the World Trade Organization. This aspect of the WTO where we all thought that the developing countries would come together and articulate their interest from a common platform that has got you know that has taken a big hit in the run up to Buenos Aires. There are a number of countries who have joined the big players in supporting issues like e-commerce investment and things like that which was never part of the developing country agenda. So in my view you know the whole North-South battle where the South stood very strongly in supporting the development agenda and can carry forward this plank that is the real you know would say the victim of the process leading up to M11. The biggest advantage of the WTO in the multilateral platform that we saw in the past was that there was a possibility of the developing countries coming together and forming these coalitions which could then stand up to the might of the big guys. And today we find that this possibility has taken a severe beating because you know you have this group of developing countries who are supporting issues like e-commerce and investment which were never a part of the developing country agenda. This was actually the agenda of global capital and they were pushing this agenda relentlessly in the WTO till now and they were not getting any move forward because developing countries were resisting. So for me the you know demise of the Southern platform the developing the possibility of the developing countries coming together and securing a better share of global trade and thereby creating possibilities of development that has become the biggest victim. So what you are saying basically is that two decades back in Seattle there was a kind of a coalition that was built and what we are seeing now is that coalition really coming apart of developing countries. That's right and here you know the countries which got together in Seattle included India and Brazil. China was providing tacit support. It did so after it joined the WTO in 2001. But today we find that Brazil and China are firmly entrenched in the other camp. And India doesn't seem to be saying what it should say in a very strong voice. Absolutely and India is remaining silent and this is a very strange India that we are seeing. We are not used to seeing in India particularly in the WTO. I mean earlier countries would look up to India for leadership. Absolutely and countries really rallied around India. I think we all expect that the the ultimate results are going to be very different from what we were expecting in the past two decades. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being with NewsClick. This is all we have for the moment but to keep watching NewsClick for further updates on this and other stories.