The 14th WTO ministerial conference held in Yaounde, Cameroon, in March didn't fail to disappoint. The usual North-South divide emerged on the protection of agriculture. Discussions on how to discipline industrial subsidies, a core area of contention between China and the West, were not even tabled. A roadmap for institutional reform remained elusive.
But running through all these individual failures was a deeper philosophical divide on how to move forward: via redoubled efforts to command a multilateral consensus, or via plurilateralism, with groups of like-minded countries striking agreements on particular issues. And, here, India planted its flag squarely on the multilateralist side.
