Despite being nearly isolated in the G-7 - India, Brazil, China, the European Union, US, Japan and Australia — commerce minister Kamal Nath stood his ground and did not yield to the pressures of the rich countries, especially the US, to compromise on protection of the livelihood concerns of poor farmers in developing countries. Excerpts from an interview with Arun S:

What was the main reason for the collapse of the talks at the Doha Development Round of the WTO?

The main issue was the question of protection of the livelihood security of hundreds of millions of poor farmers in India and other developing countries against import surges which could take place. The Special Safeguard Mechanism (or SSM, which enables developing countries like India to impose additional duties to protect the livelihood of its poor farmers from import surges and price declines of sensitive agricultural products) was agreed in Hong Kong, and in the Framework Agreement.

But the proposal on the table was frustrating the operationalisation of SSM. Developed countries and those with huge farm export interests wanted SSM to become effective only at a higher rate of import surge so that their interests were not hurt. I was not going to accept this proposal. There was no question of trading off commercial interests with livelihood security.

Developed countries must, in fact, reach out to the poorest and undeveloped countries. India has 300 million people living on less than a dollar a day and 700 million people at 2 dollars a day. This SSM is not just for today, but is in the larger interests of Indian agriculture. No one would have thought a year ago that there would be this sort of crisis in global food prices, which is caused also due to huge farm subsides.

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