“There is a need for capacity building of state government officials to enable them to engage in meaningful consultation with the central government to make the Foreign Trade Policy (FTP) of India address issues at the grassroots” said Dr.R.S.Ratna, Professor, Centre for WTO Studies, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), New Delhi. He was responding to one of the concerns raised by Dr. Siddhartha Mitra, Director (Research), CUTS International, regarding the centralised formulation of the FTP of India at a multi stakeholder consultation workshop organised by CUTS International in New Delhi.
Dr. Mitra also pointed out that given the complicated supply chain of specific commodities and with a majority of the population at the grassroots belonging to the informal sector, proper benefit sharing mechanism needs to be chalked out between the producers at the grassroots and the exporters to ensure that benefits of export percolate down at the grassroots. The workshop registered active participation from Mrs.Eva Bratholm, Counsellor, Political Affairs, Royal Norwegian Embassy; Mr.Manab Majumdar, Assistant Secretary General, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI); Ms.Jayati Srivastava, Associate Professor, Centre for International Politics, Organisation and Disarmament, Jawaharlal Nehru University.
This workshop has been organised under a flagship project of CUTS International entitled Grassroots Reachout and Networking in India on Trade and Economics (GRANITE) which aims to understand whether (or not) the FTP of India has promoted inclusive growth through generation of benefits and participation from grassroots level stakeholders.
For more information, please contact:
Anutosh Biswas, +9198290 41854, ab2@cuts.org
Arnab Ganguly, +9198744 10391, ag@cuts.org