India, Aug. 8 -- Reacting to the US tariffs for the first time, Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi has reiterated his resolve to protect the interests of India's farm, dairy and fisheries sectors even in the face of adversity. Modi's statement, delivered at a programme marking MS Swaminathan's birth centenary, gives the first official hint that India's refusal to succumb to US demands for opening up these critical sectors was a key factor in Trump's 25% tariffs, on which he added another 25% on Wednesday. Given the fact that trade negotiations between India and US are far from over, the PM's assertion draws an important red line for the terms of the talks. The government of India is absolutely justified in sticking to its position in protecting India's farm, dairy and fisheries sectors which would suffer heavy losses if faced with a deluge of heavily subsidised exports from the agro-industrial complex of countries such as the US. Conceding ground to the US on this could have raised similar demands from other players too. India, the US should be reminded, has been consistent about its position on these issues throughout the long arc of the making and unmaking of the now moribund multilateral trade regime. While the government's position deserves bipartisan support within the country and also from the entire Global South - India played a vanguard role in clinching the Doha agreement in World Trade Organization, which forced the advanced countries to acknowledge the concerns of the poor in the Global South - this is only a necessary and not a sufficient condition for the well-being of the Indian economy and its non-rich stakeholders. Thanks to the Green Revolution and its iterative versions in dairy and fisheries, India is now self-sufficient in food production and even a major exporter of many products. While this has done away with crippling supply-side constraints that the Indian economy used to face until the 1960s, India's current day economic challenge requires solving a second order problem of pushing the envelope on demand to boost mass income levels. It is here that export earnings and tariff-driven disruptions to them can hurt the Indian economy. The government should try and find as good a short-term solution to the American escalation on the tariff front without succumbing to Trump's blatantly unreasonable demand of opening up critical sectors such as farming. But it should also work with the understanding that long-term solutions for the Indian economy have to be outside the farm sector....