However, it is difficult to say the same about Pakistan. For instance, Mr Aziz Ahmed Khan, the new High Commissioner of Pakistan, has sought to make a distinction between airlinks and overflights. He knows only too well that India has been keen on resuming overflights, the suspension of which has caused enormous loss to both countries. Needless to say, such quibbling will not help restore bilateral relations. Compared to other regional organisations like ASEAN, SAARC has been rich in rhetoric and poor in results. Trade among the member nations is not even a fraction of its potential. Suspicion of one another is at the root of the problem. There is no denying that the differences between India and Pakistan have stood in the way of the smooth functioning of the Association. Pakistan is afraid of exposing its market to Indian goods while it pays through its nose to import the same type of goods from other countries. The very purpose of setting up SAARC was to give an impetus to trade relations among the member countries. Unfortunately, Pakistan often saw it as a forum to ventilate its viewpoint on Kashmir. The coming months will prove whether Pakistan really believes in regional cooperation and such concepts as free trade and preferential trade as contained in agreements like SAPTA and SAFTA.

Encouraged by the Maruti Udyog disinvestment experiment, the Cabinet Committee on Disinvestment decided on Thursday to sell the remaining government shares in five other companies through public offers. The five companies are VSNL, IPCL, BALCO, CMC and IBP. For quite sometime now, the reforms process had come to an end and few expected any new government initiatives in view of the coming general election. Despite occasional hiccups, disinvestment, it seems, is back on the government agenda. The proposed selloff of the government stake in the strategic oil PSUs had evoked protests from certain quarters and one thought it would be difficult to bring the reforms process in this sector back on the rails. There is more good news from other quarters. The monsoon so far has been extremely kind. Even Rajasthan has not been ignored this time and its politicians are assessing the rain effect on the coming Assembly elections. However, Orissa is still waiting for rain. A good monsoon means good crops that will lift farm incomes which, in turn, will boost demand for industrial goods. The overall effect on the economy is very positive and one can hope for a significantly higher GDP growth this fiscal.

This, it must be made clear straightaway, is not to cast undue aspersions on the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and its assignment in Ayodhya. It will certainly be unfair to prejudge the findings of the court-ordered excavation here. It will be unwise, however, to miss the point made by the German parallel. Or two points, to be precise.

The analogy, in the first place, applies directly to the defenders of the demolition, who see and set a specific task for archaeology in Ayodhya. Secondly, and more importantly, by exposing hate-peddlers’ use for history in a classic case, it shows the pointlessness of the ASI exercise. No results can be expected to vindicate the exercise, when its very rationale can only create more Ayodhyas.

The first point finds an illustration for Ayodhya-watchers in the American archaeologist’s recapitulation of the Nazi forays into her field for the cause of cultural (and racial) nationalism. Notes she: “The concept of the Kulturkreis, pioneered by the linguist-turned-prehistorian Gustav Kossinna in the 1920s and defined as the identification of ethnic regions on the basis of excavated material culture, lent theoretical support to Nazi expansionist aims in central and eastern Europe. Wherever an artifact of a type designated as “Germanic” was found, the land was declared to be ancient Germanic territory.” Strikingly similar is the archaeological evidence — some artifacts and “pillar bases” supposedly uncovered in Ayodhya — claimed in support of the site’s status as a holy territory reserved by history for a Ram temple.

Bettina Arnold does not have Ayodhya in mind, either, when she recalls also the Nazi archaeologists’ quest for the remains of an imagined temple of the Teutonic past in Externsteine, a natural sandstone formation in northern Germany. “The site was described in numerous publications as a monument to German unity and the glorious Germanic past, despite the fact that no convincing evidence of a temple or Germanic occupation of the site was ever found.”

There is little doubt that failure to find evidence of an old Ram temple at the disputed Ayodhya site will not dampen the spirits of our demolitionists, either. Only the other day, Mr Seshadri Chari, Editor of RSS weekly Organiser, told a television audience that the ASI was betraying symptoms of a “secular syndrome” in failing to interpret the “pillar bases” immediately as corroboration of the “parivar” case, and that evidence of “any structure” below the Babri rubble should be a vindication and victory for his camp.

The absurdity of the idea may be obvious. Unfortunately, however, it is not apparent to many that, even if the evidence they claim is indeed unearthed, it will not vindicate the campaign to enshrine virulent communalism forever in Ayodhya. No results of the excavation will warrant revanchism, historical revenge as a way of national life.

The point needs to be made, not because of any possibility of the “parivar” proving its claim. And it is not as if only rains could save the secularist case from the ASI’s spades and shovels. Technical pleas against rushing the ASI on this — such as the prolonged time needed for an archaeological excavation of properly verified procedures — are valid enough. They do not testify to apprehensions in the opposite camp with no paucity of professional historians and archaeologists.

The few and feeble attempts made before to lend archaeological legitimacy to the Ayodhya campaign have already been exposed as punditry of a mendacious, politically motivated kind. Eminent historian Irfan Habib has, in a recent newspaper interview, cited serious grounds for believing that the few sculptures and the inscribed slab sought to be produced as signs of a temple, besides the “pillar bases”, had been planted at the site. As for the “pillar bases”, the work of their discoverer B.B. Lal, who was also the first to suggest in 1990 a relocation of the Babri Masjid to facilitate his archaeological mission, has been found worthless by several experts.

The “parivar” leaders pretend not to have noticed prominent historian K.M. Shrimali and others casting serious doubts on, if not disproving, the discovery of any “pillar bases”. The fragmentary finds made of “haphazardly laid” brickbat, on expert analysis, are considered more likely to have been parts of the walls of a fortification. Shrimali has pointed out that these “structural remnants” were not all contemporaneous, but belonged to “at least five sequential phases”.

The point about the pointlessness of the ASI exercise, regardless of the results, still needs to be made. This is because the exercise itself is an important gain for the “parivar”, again regardless of the results. That a court has ordered it, and an anxious country awaits the outcome, is itself a victory for the politics of the past as propaganda. The implicit assumption is that the destruction of the Babri Masjid would be vindicated if it is demonstrated to be an act of historical vendetta.

The country’s highest forum of historians has sounded a dire warning against the dangers of this assumption being accepted, and the warning deserves repetition. The first post-Babri Indian History Congress in 1993, in a resolution adopted by an overwhelming majority, strongly opposed the adoption of the principle that “a monument can be destroyed or removed if there are any grounds for assuming that a religious structure of any other community had previously stood at its site”.

“Such a post facto rationalisation, it added, “will place in jeopardy the fate of numerous historical monuments all over the country, an increasing number of which are being targeted for destruction by the communal forces.”

It is not only on archaeological issues that such an alarm needs to be sounded. What must be opposed more fundamentally is the adoption and acceptance of the principle, politics and philosophy of revanchism on the specious ground that it rights a historical wrong. It is as absurd a principle as the one under which, say, Oriyas of today are called upon to settle scores with the Biharis to avenge the killings of King Ashoka’s Kalinga war. Will revived memories of Chera-Pandya-Chola battles rationalise internecine conflicts in South India? Will the history of the early Jains’ persecution under some Hindu kings warrant a retaliatory movement? Vendettas can be no way of life for any country, least of all for one of India’s long and labyrinthine history.

In atypical old sepia photographs of the Raj at its zenith, one sees the Indian landscape dotted with the odd English man, essentially the Brown Sahib lording over native subjects. contrarily today, the British landscape brims with Indians in areas like Southhall, Wembley, Bradford, Hounslow. One can spot the odd English man among a sea of Indian faces who now sticks out like a sore thumb on his own soil.

On arrival in Britain at Heathrow airport one is received by our village “babas” and “bijis”, the only difference is the apparel they don. Quite ill at ease in trouser suits or western dresses, they welcome us in chaste Punjabi as they direct us to fall into the immigration queues. In fact, the queues of British citizens have large numbers of Indians, most of whom are repositories of culture as they froze with the time they immigrated from India. Interestingly, the immigration officer endeavours and fumbles with Indian dialect like his ancestors of yore of the “koi hai” days, only this time on his own turf. If they were to come to life today they would be astounded at their countrymen welcoming natives on to the English soil.

On the roads most of the transport system, whether the buses plying or taxi cabs available, are largely driven by Asian drivers. The British no longer screw their noses up at the “stench” of Indian curries, as they used to do when the early immigrants settled into housing areas. Today’s Englishman would rather savour and devour Indian food to make up for the loss of centuries of colonial rule, when they were victims of acute diarrhoea, some fatally so, as the innumerable epitaphs in erstwhile colonial graveyards reflect.

During the Independence movement we made bonfires of British textiles. Today, the British shopping arcades showcase haute couture highlighted with Indian embroideries and sequin work. The trendiest footwear is Indian chappals. Most of the apparel we take for granted as it lies in bulk at the Janpath walk is absolutely chic for the British.

In fact, the ultimate feast for the Brits is tandoori food, tapping to bhangra, dressed in an Indian Jaipuri skirt or sleeping on beautiful Indian textiles amidst Shyam Ahuja durries, seeing “Bend it like Beckham” dreaming “Bombay Dreams,” not to forget the Bollywood festival held at Selfridges on Regent Street, last summer.

Before dealing with the finer details of the discussions likely to take place in Cancun, a few facts need to be in order to put the issue in perspective. The meeting will take place in the backdrop of the Doha round of negotiations. The Doha round was significant in one basic aspect. It took place in the aftermath of September 11, 2001 as the US and European Union (EU) cooperated to push through an agenda (known as the Doha Development Agenda) for limited trade negotiations.

Since then much water has flown through the Thames, the Rhine and the Euphrates resulting in major trade conflicts between the US and the EU. The close personal relationship between US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick and EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy notwithstanding, the present contextual positions between Doha and Cancun are quite different.

In 2001, the US and the EU shared a common position on terrorism and Afghanistan, and Washington had not yet imposed a 40 per cent protective tariff on steel imports and passed on its $100 billion in subsidies to American farmers. Moreover, unlike 2001, France and the US did not share the same views to bring about “freedom” to Iraqis.

The Doha Development Agenda (DDA) had agreed on finalising the modalities for agricultural trade negotiations by March 31, 2003. Although the deadline has been missed despite hectic parleys in Geneva, it is now certain that agriculture will come in the realm of the multilateral trading system. The roadmap laid down at Doha envisaged that the Cancun negotiations would discuss ways and means to eliminate trade distortionary measures.

For an aggrarian economy such as India, the issues are multifold — reducing export subsidies, providing greater access to markets and reducing, if not removing, domestic support to farmers. In addition India and other developing countries are calling for negotiations on non-trade concerns and special and differential (S&D) treatment for developing countries.

The developing countries have called for a reduction, if not elimination, of export subsidies and a strong in-built mechanism to prevent side-stepping WTO-mandated norms through food aid, subsidised export credits and state trading enterprises.

To begin with, India wants a 50 per cent reduction in export subsidies by the developed world as a form of down payment, which will eventually pave the way for completely eliminating measures having a specified time-period. Furthermore, India is advocating the cause of providing additional flexibility for developing countries, which will allow these countries to provide product specific subsidies and marketing.

India’s contention is that agriculture is a way of life in many developing countries and faster growth of the farm sector is of critical importance for fulfilling the basic developmental objectives of poverty elimination and food security. In many developing countries the rural economy is the single largest employer (in India it is 70 per cent) and is a significant contributor to the national income. Farm productivity in such countries is low due to structural inefficiencies such as small unirrigated land holdings and a low level of farm mechanisation. A majority of the farmers in countries like India are involved in subsistence land farming, and consequently their participation in international trade is quite marginal. Given such characteristic inefficiencies and minimal presence of export subsidies, the domestic farm policies as these exist today (the public distribution system for instance) cannot be considered as trade distortionary.

The issues relating to domestic support to agriculture have been put by the WTO into three boxes - the amber box, the green box and the blue box. The amber box mandates that subsidies that distort trade must be reduced; the green box, on the other hand, envisages that subsidies having minimal distortion of trade can continue without limits; and the blue box has all the exemptions to the general rule that all subsidies linked to production must be reduced.

For India and other agrarian developing countries, the Green Box of the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) is of paramount importance as it addresses issues pertaining to food security. The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) in its paper on issues at stake relating to agricultural development, trade and food security has concluded: “significant progress in promoting economic growth, reducing poverty and enhancing food security cannot be achieved in most of these countries without developing more fully the potential capacity of the agriculture sector and its contribution to overall economic development”.

The Green Box in its present form does not directly address the concerns of the developing world - especially in view of the fact that diverse structural bottlenecks are prevalent in the farm economy of these countries. Observers point out that most of the norms are specifically tailored for the developed countries. It does not, for instance, have provisions for the general development of agriculture, including its diversification in developing countries. To cite an example input subsidies given by developing countries for crops wherein productivity levels are below the world average should be covered under the Green Box. India has, therefore, said that a more flexible mechanism should be built into the Green Box which will allow developing countries to administer such policies.

This is where the argument for special and differential (S&D) treatment to developing countries comes to the fore. Although the WTO does recognise the need for S&D treatment for developing countries, there is no unanimity among the countries themselves on the grounds on which S&D treatment should be accorded. India and Nigeria, for instance, have emphasised food security in developing countries while some others have identified easier access to developed markets as the concern.

The debate on market access has also entered a crucial phase. With the elimination of quantitative restrictions, many member countries are resorting to import quotas as a measure of domestic support. Quotas were created to allow imports at a low rate and very high rates outside the quota. The negotiations today are on reducing tariffs outside the quotas as well as reducing the size of the quotas, the rates within the quotas and the way the quotas are administered. India has proposed that developed countries should make a down payment by immediately bringing down their tariff bindings by 50 per cent.

Primarily, the standoff in the WTO revolves around four fundamental questions:

* Whether different sets of rules should be established for developed and developing countries that would partly exempt the latter from commitments under the AoA ?

* Is allowing more flexibility for developing countries to protect and support their domestic production (especially with regard to staples and food security crops) the best way to deal with their weaknesses?

* Or is further liberalisation flanked with some flexibility is more effective?

* Should only developing countries be allowed to address non-trade issues such as food security and rural development? and

* Should additional Special & Differential Treatment (S&D) provisions apply generally to all developing countries?