Nasir Hamid Khan
sunfresh1102@gmail.com
The ‘Fact Sheet’ released by the White House on 9th of February, among other things, informed us about the following facts:
” India will open up it’s market of over 1.4 billion to American products;
” In the coming weeks, the United States and India will promptly implement this framework and work towards finalizing the Interim Agreement with a view to concluding a mutually beneficial BTA to lock in benefits for American workers and businesses.
” The last section of the fact-sheet titled ‘Liberating America from Unfair Trade Practices’ states that President Trump has challenged the assumption that American workers and businesses must tolerate unfair trade practices that have disadvantaged them for decades and contributed to their historic trade deficit. President Trump continues to advance the interests of the American people by removing tariff and non-tariff barriers and expanding market access for American exporters, including the agricultural sector.
Today, India is the world’s fourth largest economy by nominal GDP and third-largest by Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) and only United States and China remain ahead and yet we are not only being blamed for protecting our interests but also being accused of ‘maintaining some of the highest tariffs on the U.S of any world economy and having a history of imposing highly protectionist non-tariff barriers that have banned and prohibited many U.S exports.’ If certain sectors were protected since decades, there would have been sound reasons for that. I find the tone and tenor of these words condescending, at least the Britishers were polite initially.
‘Those Who Cannot Remember the Past are Condemned to Repeat It’
These words of George Santayana for people who spend their lives without reflecting on their past come to my mind. So, I decided to take a quick look towards our past, as I have known it.
Ours was once a region which, driven by massive textile manufacturing, agriculture and administrative reforms had surpassed China as the worlds leading economic powerhouse in the 17th Century, far ahead of the Ottomans and others till the East India Company arrived.
Renowned historian and economist Utsa Patnaik’s research based on detailed analysis of the tax and trade data of those times was published in 2018. She established that the British Crown looted nearly 45 trillion USD from India between the period 1765-1938 in the grandest tax-trade-buy scam the world has ever seen. Taxes were imposed, collected and then agents were given a portion of these revenues which funded the purchase of gems, spices, cotton textiles, raw silk, indigo dye, saltpetre, tea, sugar and other cash crops from peasants, traders and weavers. These products were then sold for huge profits the world over and all the gold and silver accumulated in London. India ended up showing a fictional deficit due to this reason, forcing it to accumulate unnecessary debt of their colonial overlords. When they realised that the import of Indian textiles was adversely impacting their own mills, they imposed exorbitant duties, outright bans, and discriminatory tariffs reaching 70-80 % forcing India to become a raw material exporter. The Calico Act of 1700 & 1721 were introduced which banned use, sale, and import of Indian calicoes, silks, and muslins in England and by early 1800’s, the duties on Indian calicoes went as high as 65 % while British goods entered India with minimal taxes, often less than 3.5%.
The only hiccup during this period occurred in the year 1857 when Hindu and Muslim sepoys revolted in what is also known as the Sepoy Mutiny. The biggest shock for the Britishers was when the mutineers, a majority being Hindu sepoys, stormed the Red Fort and installed an aging Bahadur Shah Zafar as the leader of the revolt, declaring him to be the Emperor of India (Shahenshah-e-Hind).
The British Crown immediately stripped East India Company of its administrative powers and assumed direct rule through the Government of India Act, 1858. To prevent future uprisings, the army was restructured based on a “divide and rule” policy and regiments were reorganized along caste, regional and religious lines. Another result of this policy shift was injecting of the narrative of incompatibility of Hindu’s and Muslim’s and the first ever mention of different nations by British historians. The services of agents’ provocateurs and saboteurs were deployed to build up these false narratives and demolish whatever threat a united India posed. At the same time to solidify its control by creating a loyal indigenous elite, the British Crown established “The Most Exalted Order of the Star of India” in 1861 to ‘reward conspicuous merit and loyalty,’ followed by “The Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) and other honors which was a system of knighthoods honouring Indian princes and chiefs supporting the Raj. This is how control was regained by the British Crown.
In 1927, the British Crown constituted the Indian Statutory Commission, popularly known as the Simon Commission which visited India in 1928. It was this visit that gave us the enduring slogan of Indian Independence Movement ‘Simon Go Back’, which was coined by a young revolutionary Yusuf Meherally. A favourite of Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel, Yusuf is also credited with subsequently coining the most famous slogan ‘Quit India’. The imposition of taxes on salt and subsequent rebellions by freedom fighters and for other reasons connected with eruption of the Second World War, we finally saw the dawn of freedom but not before the seeds of hatred sowed by the British resulted in another partition. Unyoked from the chains of colonisation, a truncated but resurgent India rose to become a globally recognised superpower.
Amongst the confusion surrounding the Trade Deal, President Trump and his aides are celebrating it as a major win for their farmers, businesses and agricultural sector whereas the Indian farmer has only been told that his interests have been ‘protected’. There is nothing to indicate that the income of our farmers would grow, which in itself is a major concern. Former Finance & Economic Affairs Secretary, Subhash Chandra Garg in his detailed analysis of the trade deal titled ‘Deal of Unequals: India’s Pain;Trump’s Gain’ published in the Deccan Herald on 10th of February, concludes with the remarks that ‘this disastrous deal will hurt and haunt India for decades to come.’
With unsustainable debt, crop failures, climate change and low market prices forcing a reported annual average of 10,000 farmers and agricultural labourers to commit suicide in India, a total of 4 lac deaths between 1995-2023, I pray Subhash Chandra Garg is wrong. But I can hazard a guess that income of our farmers will be much reduced and that of the American farmer, already earning an estimated annual income of around 9 crores per farmer will more than double. Three years late and on the wrong continent, that may still count as a promise kept.
Fruit & Nuts
With regard to Kashmir, it appears certain that our fruits like apples, pears, cherries, apricots, strawberries, plums and peaches as also our nuts (walnuts & almonds) will be crushed by the competition. Our apple farmers had been urging for increasing of the import duty from 50 percent to 100 percent. The Government has instead reduced it to 25 percent for New Zealand and United States, and reportedly 20 percent for the EU deal.
With a yield accounting for 95 percent of India’s total walnut production, Kashmir has traditionally dominated the domestic market. Research shows that having a higher oil content, Kashmiri walnuts are a healthier option than the imported hybrid variants which due to advanced technology are bigger, visually appealing and whiter in color. Our annual production is in the vicinity of 3 lac metric tons, 89,000 hectares of land mostly in Kupwara, Shopian, Baramulla and Anantnag is engaged in walnut cultivation and over 7 lac people are directly and indirectly dependent on it.
The methods of farming remain archaic and traditional. In the year 2025, five people died, dozens were crippled with spinal injuries and hundreds suffered broken limbs and fractures during the walnut harvesting season. Despite being naturally blessed with fertile soil and climate ideal for walnut farming, we have failed to put in the human effort, agricultural innovation and long term planning required to really benefit from this roaring global industry worth more than 9 billion USD today. Maybe political instability, lack of continuity of policies and civil unrest has so far prevented us from creating a sustainable enterprise. This year’s budget has announced a dedicated programme for rejuvenating old, low-yielding orchards and also expand high-density cultivation of walnuts. Over the years not much value addition is visible and apart from the natural qualities, required critical interventions in soil preparation, phytosanitary measures, harvesting, packaging and marketing interventions are not in place. As a Kashmiri deeply attached to the soil and trees of this land, this failure gives one extreme sorrow and grief.
(The author is Former Senior Vice President, Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry.)
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