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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | How Consultative Has India's RCEP Strategy Really Been? -Albertina Almeida

How Consultative Has India's RCEP Strategy Really Been? -Albertina Almeida

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published Published on Aug 21, 2019   modified Modified on Aug 21, 2019
-TheWire.in

There is little doubt that the smaller stakeholders and businesses within India's informal economy have the most to lose, and yet their voices are not being heard.

“Concluding RCEP [Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership] this year is the region’s ‘collective interest and highest priority’”, trade ministers of the proposed pact are reported to have announced after their meeting in China in early August 2019.

India was interestingly not represented by trade minister Piyush Goyal, but by commerce secretary Anup Wadhawan. It has been reported that the last-minute withdrawal of Goyal’s presence in Beijing was possibly prompted by concerns raised by the Indian industry, during consultations with them, that China would wreak havoc in the domestic market with its cheap exports.

Besides being a signatory to the joint statement of RCEP trade ministers, Wadhawan later issued a statement that “India’s concerns regarding market access and other issues leading to imbalanced trade between some of the partner countries was specifically flagged during the meetings”.

However, in the bargaining between market access for foreign goods in India vis-à-vis access to Indians in professional services in foreign markets – and in the run-up towards proposed finalisation by November 2019 – the plank of democracy and due process on which these negotiations must take place is conspicuously missing.

In fact, RCEP is in the continuum of this undemocratic treaty-making, as many have noted. Legal researcher and policy analyst Shalini Bhutani, who has done extensive work on the impacts of Free Trade Agreements, points out that the practice of RCEP treaty-making negotiations continues to be at odds with the promise of the constitution, of a federal structure for governance in our polity.  

Bhutani explains that there is wisdom and logic behind distributing decision-making powers across the state and local level to manage our affairs in such a vast and diverse society. In the exercise of executive power of treaty-making, be it regional treaties such as the proposed RCEP or the bilateral treaties (such as India-ASEAN), the treaty deals are struck by the Central government, or more particularly by the prime minister and the trade minister.

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TheWire.in, 18 August, 2019, https://thewire.in/economy/how-consultative-has-indias-rcep-strategy-really-been


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