Monica Gupta: Spoiler or saviour?

BACKSTAGE

Colour has always been Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath's strong point: both in what he wears and how he behaves. At Hong Kong, Nath wore a t-shirt to Thursday night's Green Room meeting. This was an indication of his confidence that he, and India, had arrived on the world stage.

Nath, along with Brazilian Minister Celso Amorim, has become the voice of the developing countries at Hong Kong. The importance that the developing countries are giving India here at the ministerial is evident from the fact that nearly every briefing convened by Amorim has Nath sharing the podium.

Press briefings convened by Nath also evince a lot of interest among the international media. Also after the EU and the US, India invites the maximum number of questions from the fourth estate.

Nath will add another feather to his cap if the grand alliance of the developing and the least developed countries, likely to be called the G-110, comes through. The minister has been putting his inter-personal skills to good use here by talking about cotton, sugar and bananas "" commodities that are of great interest to the African countries.

However, not everyone is won over by his charming ways. Peter Mandelson, the European Union trade commissioner, has not spared any opportunity to shift the blame for the deadlock to the G-20 and India and Brazil in particular.

Questions regarding India or Brazil thrown at him by the press have been pointedly ignored. On Friday, for instance, after issuing a press release blaming India and Brazil for "fooling" countries on industrial tariff reduction, Mandelson refused to take questions from the Indian media present at his briefing.

All this is so much water off Nath's back. Although he has been quoted by the Western media as saying that not a lot should be expected from the Hong Kong meeting, the way Nath has posited issues has won him a lot of admirers.

In an interview with Financial Times, Nath said: "What really upsets me is that developed countries are asking: 'If we stop doing what we shouldn't be doing, what are you willing to pay us for it?'"

"That approach is not one which is going to fly."

He added: "We can't have our economy shaken by subsidised exports of food, of grains, and at the same time we can't have our economy shaken just as we are nurturing our manufacturing sector."

Tough words but then you should expect nothing less from the Cowboy of Commerce!