India’s recalibrated free trade agreement strategy lacks appropriate coherence to its trade policy that vouches for domestically produced goods over imported goods. The increased proclivity towards signing the free trade agreements is more driven by its geostrategic interests and prominently addressing the supply-chain vulnerabilities.
WTO negotiations so far have shown that when countries forge alliances they can generate synergies and become powerful players. The EU, Cairns Group and the African bloc have emerged as influential groups within the WTO. Several factors have stalled the evolution of a common position among south Asian countries: regional politics and antipathies, the economic disparity in the region, and the temptation for individual countries to draw up independent arrangements with developed countries in return for trade favours often detrimental to regional interests. Will south Asian countries function with a common agenda at Cancun?
Despite beginning the industrialisation process ahead of most of east Asia, India's manufactured exports as a whole have stagnated when benchmarked against east Asia. While its east Asian neighbours have been able to move rapidly from manufactured labour-intensive commodities, India has largely been left out of the production-sharing process. If India is to become a manufacturing powerhouse like China and most of the other middle-income countries in east Asia, it needs to take steps to integrate more effectively and intensively with the rest of east Asia and become an important participant in the regional and global division of labour.
The Japan-Singapore trade agreement which has been agreed to recently and is in the process of being implemented is viewed as a possible template for other trade agreements in Asia and therefore warrants close examination.
Free Trade Todayby Jagdish Bhagwati; Princeton University Press, 2002; published in India by Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2002; pp xiii + 128, Rs 295.
The World Social Forum at Porto Alegre offered no blueprint for countries and for all time. It was rather a forum that offered to tens of thousands of courageous men and women, rigorous analyses of the international capitalist order and above all, gave a call for action to replace it.
