A pound of flesh to feed the poor

The Doha Development Round at WTO(World Trade Organisation) has been on the table since a decade, with no forthcoming results. The West demands developing countries like India, Brazil and China to remove the import barriers and allow more access to their markets; whereas developing countries demand the West including US and EU to remove the large subsidies they provide to their rich farmers. But neither bargain has been fruitful. Now, is the time when US can win on both sides because UPA is ready to bargain on any terms to have its Food Security Act get working before the upcoming elections.

Mr. Jayant Dasgupta, India's permanent representative to the WTO in Geneva, states that this bargain has nothing in it for the developing countries. Still, to ensure that their election campaigns go wild by the Food Security Act and India commits under the WTO AoA(Agreement on Agriculture), UPA is definitely laid down. This has many concerns coming up, of which the primary would be that the deal is unequal on the balance, and another important factor would be that it will affect the diplomatic relations with other developing countries having the same demands.

WTO has a limit set on the amount of support countries can provide  for an agricultural product under AMS(Aggregate Measurement of Support). But the AMS rule is obsolete as the 'external reference price', an important factor in deciding the amount of support, is based on 1986-88 levels when the world food prices were low. Any alternative solution can be found only when these prices are updated to the current global prices. Also, UPA has to look far beyond the elections, towards what's good for the nation.

Commandeering change

Like every time, once again the elections are curiously awaited, for a dream to change India, for a chance to choose someone better. What we have as options are UPA and BJP.
While there was a time between 1996-98 when we had four different Prime Ministers, and now is a time which has seen only two Prime Ministers in last 15 years. Where once stability was highly demanded, now we are dissatisfied with the kind of stability we have faced, a far too extreme stability of 10 years. So, the change demanded by the common man is not of the party or the leader, it is of the the system as a whole. And our urge to see this change, lets us being fooled by the modern marketing and campaigning strategies of these parties and leaders.
First, the author discusses our first option- Mr. Modi from BJP. Though he surely represents a change, but he has yet to convince that he will bring the change. The big miscalculated assumption of BJP that the Lok Sabha elections will be held in Nov, 13 may bring unplanned consequences to its early Modi fire. Due to Modi entering the arena too early, his once pure and nice character is being questioned as 'feku'. Although he hasn't claimed to bring about dramatic changes, still he convinces to bring forward the existing plans in better fruitful ways.
Next, discussion comes along the ways of Congress and Rahul Gandhi. Congress has been ruling the nation for 10 years, with a mediocre performance. What Rahul Gandhi needs to do is to show us the difference between the 2004-14 UPA and the upcoming Congress. Though he started bad, by going against the 'criminal' ordinance, everybody waits to get answer to what he is capable of in future.
Here we stand again hand-in-hand waiting for a change, led by the chosen. The change we need is though more or less the same, still we have different questions in our minds.