The
Indian government is negotiating RCEP with 15 other countries
including ASEAN countries along with large industrial economies like
China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. The RCEP is a
great threat to our food and farm sector, and the negotiations are
reportedly coming to a close by the beginning of November 2019.
Here
are some reasons why we are calling on our state and national
governments to take agriculture out the RCEP and all other Free Trade
Agreements:-
-
The RCEP will permanently bring down import duties on most agricultural commodities to zero.
-
Many countries are looking to dump their agricultural produce in India - sectors like dairy, which support livelihoods of millions of our marginal farmers, especially women, are under grave threat. Similar is the case with plantation products.
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Seed companies will get more powers to protect their Intellectual Property Rights, and farmers would be criminalised when they save and exchange seeds.
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Foreign corporations could bypass national courts and sue our governments for favouring our own farmers and workers at private arbitration tribunals via Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanisms that are being discussed.
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Leaked documents indicate that foreign investors would be able to purchase farmland and foreign corporations might also get support in government/public procurement of goods and services.
-
Large retail will get more power to wipe out local markets.
With
11 of these countries, India already has significant trade deficit
and this is only projected to increase with the signing of RCEP.
Indian
farmers cannot be subjected to one more free trade deal that is not
protective of their interests and pits them against significant
subsidies elsewhere. We need to collectively resist and stop RCEP
from moving further, and to ensure that agriculture - including the
dairy sector and plantation products - is taken out of RCEP. We need
to activate our respective state governments to intervene
immediately, and get them to write to the Union Government.
It
is not just farmers who are facing an existential crisis here – the
nation’s food sovereignty is at stake here. We need to protect
ourselves by keeping agriculture out of the purview of all free trade
agreements and we certainly need to stop RCEP.
A
background note on RCEP, a letter that you can submit as a memorandum
to your state government and to the Minister of Commerce are
downloadable here.
Please let us
know if you plan to do an action and where, at this email address of
Indian Coordination Committee of Farmers’ Movements:-
secretariaticcfm@gmail.com
RESIST RCEP! PROTECT INDIAN FARMERS!
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