US-India suicide pact

[idlisambar]

There is another aspect to the outsourcing debate that should be brought into sharper focus. Our current administration is trying to use outsourcing as leverage to open up Indian markets to our agricultural and manufacturing goods. So far the Indian administration is having none of it, citing our heavy agriculture subsidies.

http://www.bday.co.za/bday/content/direct/1,3523,1546168-6078-0,00.html

The nightmare scenario is that some kind of compromise is drawn in which the US drops any future outsourcing restrictions and lowers its agriculture subsidies, while in exchange India opens up its markets.

There is a real potential for devastation to the Indian economy if this ever comes to fruition. Such an agreement could dislodge the majority of India's population, still involved in agriculture, to benefit its emerging urban English-speaking professionals and those in its investor class. Much like NAFTA brought a flood of Mexican small farmers across our border, there will be an acceleration in the movement of India's rural poor into its already teeming urban slums.

The Indian government is even more in love with its tech sector than we are and, at least in rhetoric, embraces the fundamentals of neoliberalism, so this scenario may well happen. Those with a soft spot for outsourcing because it helps a lot of Indian professionals might do well to pay to attention to the overall picture -- the Indian government is just as capable of selling out its people to benefit the elite few as our government is.

[4morewars]

1. Then they will lose

There is no way a small farmer with a donkey can compete with big agribusiness.

[NEOBuckeye]

2. This is wrong

The only real beneficiaries of policies like these are the huge, multinational corporations that owe allegiance to no country, and no one. The common people get screwed every time.

[Centre_Left]

3. Hmm...

So you would rather prop up India's creaky, inefficient agricultural industry at the expense of US taxpayers and Indian consumers?

[idlisambar]

4. Absolutely

About 750 million people, or 70% of India's population, work in the agriculture sector. Would you advocate exposing the majority of your country's population to even greater poverty, if not ruin? What benefit to the remaining consumers would possibly make this a smart move? What would you have the tens to hundreds of millions of displaced farm workers do?

You have to understand that India is already having trouble keeping up with the efficiency gains it has made. The flood of people coming into the cities is overwhelming the infrastructure of its cities.

I am not sure what US taxpayers have to do with it, the primary beneficiaries of outsourcing are investors. Perhaps you are talking about the subsidies the US provides to agribusiness being wasteful, but that is another discussion.