When I recently read that the US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick had very specifically asked India to open up its market for highly subsidized American farm produce, I am reminded of what a former Chief Economist of the World Bank, Nicholas Stern, during his travels in the country at that time, had succinctly remarked: “I agree it is a sin to provide the US farmers the kind of subsidies they get, but it will be a recipe for disaster if India does not open up.”

The same kind of hypocrisy has been exhibited time and again by successive US Secretaries of Agriculture.