New Delhi: External Affairs Minister Dr S. Jaishankar has rejected claims that India is “holding back” in ongoing free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations with the UK and other countries, adding that with such agreements, Indian livelihoods are on the line.
“I hear these naysayers’ narrative coming back. Why isn’t India quickly signing up with the UK? Nobody says why isn’t the UK quickly signing up with India? So somewhere, it is like we have to make that accommodation. We are the people who, somewhere, are holding back, and we should speed it up because every FTA and every open step is an achievement in itself…,” the foreign minister said at an event in New Delhi, Monday.
He was addressing the launch of career diplomat Mohan Kumar’s book titled ‘India’s Moment: Changing Power Equations around the World’.
Jaishankar’s remarks come a day after India and the UK concluded the thirteenth round of FTA negotiations which took place in London and New Delhi from 18 September to 15 December. The FTA talks, which saw their Diwali deadline lapse last year, have run into many delays. The latest round focussed on “complex issues, primarily goods, services, and investment”.
While the UK has been pushing for greater access in sectors of liquor and automobiles, India is keen on easier mobility and visa rules for Indian companies, among other aspects. An agreement on rules of origin and a bilateral investment treaty is also pending.
India is currently in FTA talks with the UK, the European Union (EU) and Israel, among others.
Over the last few years, India has inked such agreements with the UAE and a mini-deal of sorts with Australia, called the Australia-India Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement (ECTA). New Delhi and Canberra are in the midst of negotiating a larger pact dubbed the Australia-India Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA).
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‘Livelihoods on the line’
While speaking at the book launch Monday, Jaishankar argued that FTAs are important but for a country like India, livelihoods are at stake.
“FTAs have a use but FTAs, at the end of the day for a country with a per capita income that we have and with small producers, I would very judiciously consider the merits and the risks of an FTA. It’s because we are exposing millions of people, their livelihoods are on the line,” he stated.
He further explained India is currently engaged in “fairly serious negotiations with some fairly serious partners regarding free trade pacts” but that there is a perception that New Delhi is “holding back”.
The foreign minister went on to dispute this perception, by arguing that the Covid-19 pandemic reopened the debate about the need for strategic autonomy, especially in an economic sense and with regard to supply chains.
“American and European domestic politics is often made to appear very reasonable. They can’t do this because they have a big domestic lobby. What about my domestic lobby? How often do we talk about that? Domestic politics is there in every polity. We should not be defensive of our domestic requirements because other countries assert it almost as a baseline of a negotiation,” he said.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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