Meeting with Indian Origin Parliamentarians, October 26, 2007

The India-EU Forum of Parliamentarians under the aegis of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) hosted the visiting fifteen member strong delegation of Indian origin Parliamentarians from Europe and North America on Friday, October 26, 2007 over an interaction on 'India and the Doha Development Round'.

The delegation comprised Lord Bhiku Parekh (Labour), The Rt. Hon. Keith Vaz (Labour), Lord Adam Patel (Labour), Baroness Sandip Verma (Conservative), Lord Mohammed Sheikh (Conservative), Lord Narendra Babubhai Patel (Crossbench), Baroness Usha Prashar (Crossbench), Lord Kamlesh Patel (Crossbench), Lord Karan Bilimoria (Crossbench), Lord Navnit Dholakia (Libdem), Lord Diljit Rana (Crossbench), The Rt. Hon. Virender K. Sharma, MP from the United Kingdom; Hon. Ms. Neena Gill, and Hon. Mr. Claude Moraes from the European Parliament; and Hon. Swati Dandekar from United States of America.

The meeting was well attended by prominent Indian Parliamentarians including Mr. Mohammad Salim (Communist Party of India (Marxist)), Mr. Lakshman Singh (Bharatiya Janata Party), Mr. K Samba Siva Rao (Indian National Congress), and Mr. Tariq Anwar (Nationalist Congress Party); former Indian ambassadors such as Amb. M.K. Rasgotra, Amb. B M Oza, Amb. K P Fabian, and Amb. Ishrat Aziz; and well-known industrialists like Mr. Vikramjit Singh Sahney, Corporate President, Sun International, Mr. Devin Narang, Chairman, Freeplay Energy India Pvt Ltd, Mr. K N Memani, Chairman, KNM Advisory Pvt. Ltd, and Mr. Sushil Maroo, Director Finance, Jindal Steel. Mr. Vivek Bharti, Advisor, National Policy, Programme and Projects, FICCI presided over the session.

Some of the vital issues raised during the interactive session included but were not limited to ensuring food security, the increasing number of farmer suicides in India and the measures being taken by the government to deal with such situations, India's efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, and opening FDI in the retail sector.

The parliamentarians from Europe and North America sought to know about India's position with the other developing countries on the issue of World Trade Organisation. The Indian parliamentarians and the FICCI replied that they wished to push for fair trade and stressed that India intended reducing trade-distorting issues in the future.

Questions were also asked about India's problems in negotiating with the European Union commissioners on issues relating to trade. To this the parliamentarians replied that there was no such major issue, but dealing with the US was a bit of a problem experienced by many entrepreneurs.

Lord Sheikh talked about micro-financing and micro credit, while Ms. Neena Gill from the European Parliament wanted to know about FICCI's role in corporate social responsibility.

Answering Lord Sheikh's question, parliamentarian Mohammad Salim illustrated the example of Bangladesh, where the Grameen Bank system was successful due to the absence of a three-tier system of governance. In contrast, in India, he explained that the Panchayat Raj system, which was so deep rooted, had its own strengths to tackle the microeconomic shortcomings of the country's economic set-up.

Answering Ms. Gill's query, regarding FICCI's role in promoting corporate social responsibility, Mr. Bharti said that the Chamber was an important link between the industry and the government and was the an active promoter and supporter of corporates giving back to the people of its country in a meaningful way.

On the issue of slowing down of the process of the Indo-US nuclear deal, Ms. Dandekar, said she viewed India as the largest and the US as the oldest democracy, adding that India was going through a process in which there were ups and downs. Stressing that it was not an end game, she said that both India and the US were not only discussing the issue with each other but also back home. She also affirmed that having questions and debates did not mean that the deal was off. Lauding the debate within India, she said it was healthy for legislators as well as for people to ask questions.

Keeping pace with the discussion on the nuclear deal, Lord Bhikhu Parekh emphasized that it was not the perfect deal, nor the best deal India could have had. However, he underlined that the politics of it had gone wrong. According to him, since it was negotiated secretly, it created a feeling that somehow there was something more to it than what it actually carried, which made people suspicious about it.

Lord Parekh said that witnessing the hot debate over nuclear deal from long-distance, he felt the nuclear deal and the joint-military exercise came at the same time, which in turn aroused further suspicion over the strategic aspect of the deal.

In this regard he said that the strategic context of the deal seemed the bone of contention. He himself was comfortable with the nuclear deal, but he was worried about two or three provisions, viz., under the nuclear deal the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would ask where the fuel was going. This, he maintained, would mean that someday in the future inspectors could claim that quite a lot of fuel was being used in military reactors and they could demand more inspections. In this respect he wanted the government to answer whether the tracking of nuclear fuel would lead inspectors to military establishments or not.

Secondly, Lord Parekh affirmed that the details of the inspection and data of the defence reactors would be more in the open than ever before. When this data is circulating, it would be also be known to China and some such countries from whom India would like to hide things, he said. The Indo-US nuclear deal, according to him, was increasingly making China the point of reference, which was until now Pakistan.

However, the business community among the NRIs and people of Indian origin were quite ecstatic about the deal, but they were keeping hope alive and waiting for a favorable political climate to prevail in India.

Lord Bilimoria, manufacturer of the largest beer brand in Europe, while giving a background of the business community's support to the nuclear deal, argued that when the BRICS (the report that analyzed the GDP growth, per capita income and currency movements of Brazil, Russia, India and China and predicted that, by 2050, BRICs economies will be bigger than the 6 richest nation of the world today.) report arrived, it became a catalyst for India. The whole world started looking at India he informed. Before that in most economic surveys, India was not even mentioned, he stressed, adding that the BRICS report told executives to wake up to do business with India.

Referring to a recent report, according to which India could have 10 per cent growth rate for the coming 10 years, he warned that there were infrastructure issues that India needed to resolve. Stressing, that previously, India was in the Soviet bloc, Lord Bilimoria maintained that now India 's relations with US was growing stronger and stronger. He also added that the deal was giving India nuclear energy at it's own terms where transfer of technology would also be possible.

Stating that it was threatening to destabilise the whole government, he said Dr Singh was one of the most respected leaders in world, who was decent, trustworthy and hugely intelligent. Highlighting the names of Mr. P. Chidambaram, Mr. Kamal Nath and Mr. Ahluwalia as a fantastic team, he expressed his optimism that India's growth story would continue.

Lord Dholakia was elated by India's internal response to the Indo-US nuclear deal. Asserting that the big five nuclear powers had formed a club and were asking India to behave, he stressed India was in a very powerful position to tell the rest of the world not to dictate to it on the issue of nuclear energy and weapons.

Finally, he said that the Indian democracy was something people trust, and it must put across the point that the leadership was not interested in nuclear proliferation nor they would misuse nuclear weapons.

Mr. Bharti thanked the members of the visiting parliamentary delegation, the Indian parliamentarians as well as other distinguished guests for making the session interesting and fruitful by providing substantive inputs. The meeting provided the visiting lawmakers with an Indian perspective on subjects ranging from WTO, economic and trade issues with focus especially on agricultural issues, banking, rural development, and infrastructure.