With the outcome of the current round of world trade negotiations, known as the Doha Development Round, still uncertain, experts are considering how to reform the trade governance rules for the future. One such group of trade specialists recently came to New Delhi to find out the views of Indian academics, businesspeople and politicians.

The Warwick Commission, established by the University of Warwick, held a Plenary Conference at which the keynote speaker was Shri Anwarul Hoda, Member of the Planning Commission of India. The Warwick Commission also met Delhi-based trade policy specialists to discuss Indian priorities for the world trade system. The trade specialists’ views will influence the Warwick Commission’s report, which will be presented at the World Trade Organization’s (WTO’s) headquarters in Geneva, on 7 December 2007.

With a remit to investigate issues of global importance, the Warwick Commissions are charged with bringing forward recommendations which are pragmatic and offer realistic solutions to problems which have a direct affect on peoples’ lives. Set up by one of the UK’s leading research and teaching universities, the Commissions are based on the tradition of academic independence and rigorous enquiry. Professor Richard Higgott, a trade governance specialist at the University of Warwick and Director of the Warwick Commission said, “The Warwick Commission will produce recommendations which I believe will influence policymakers and help shape the debate about the future of the world trading system.”

The make up of this, the first, Warwick Commission shows how it aims to meet this objective. It brings together a unique mix of young academics and experienced trade practitioners to find ways of improving the multilateral trade system, within which India is an increasingly important player, to avoid the problems which have bedevilled the current negotiations. Crucial to its approach is the thinking of a new generation of academics who have studied the way the current trade regime works.

Complementing them is a group of Commissioners who have vast experience of the practical impact of world trade on peoples’ lives. These include Shri Pradeep Mehta, the founding Secretary General of CUTS International, a Jaipur-based organisation with extensive knowledge of the links between economic development and trade. Shri Mehta, who Chaired the meeting between the Commission and the trade specialists, said, “The Warwick Commission will be making proposals which it believes would create a fairer global trade system, one in which the huge benefits generated by world trade would be shared more equally than at present.”

The Warwick Commission judged its meetings in New Delhi a success. In their meeting with the Commission, Indian trade experts identified a number of India’s priorities for the world trade system. These included the ways in which trade contributes to economic development and the Commissioners heard how India has been able to reap the benefits of globalised trade to become a ‘tiger economy’. However, the Indian experts also expressed their concerns about how the trade system remains unfairly organised in favour of the major economic powers, notably the USA and the European Union, in areas like agriculture.

Meanwhile at the Plenary Conference, an audience of business leaders, academics, trade policy analysts and diplomats heard Shri Anwarul Hoda talk about India’s experiences of the multilateral trading system. Shri Hoda illustrated his country’s emergence as a powerful voice within the WTO by referring to his own participation in the process of trade policy development in India and in the negotiations which have resulted in the current global trade governance regime.

Hosted by Warwick University’s Vice Chancellor, Professor Nigel Thrift, the Conference also heard Dr Patrick Low, Director of Research at the WTO and a member of the Warwick Commission, give a report of the Commission’s work. Dr Low emphasised the Warwick Commission’s hope that its report will make a real contribution to the inevitable debate about the future of the world’s trading system.

Professor Higgott summed up the visit by saying that “The Warwick Commission has learned a lot about Indian perceptions of the world trade system and its report will be the better for that.”