India and the WTO

This book is designed to clarify India's interests in the World Trade Organization's Doha Development Agenda and to provide a blueprint for its strategy in multilateral negotiations. The focus is on facilitating domestic and external policy reforms that can serve to bolster India's participation in the multilateral trading system and to enhance the effectiveness of India's trade and related policies in achieving developmental goals. Individual chapters address the economic effects on India of the Uruguay Round negotiations and the prospective Doha Agenda negotiations; the implications of the abolition of the Multifibre Agreement; services issues and liberalization; telecommunications policy reforms; foreign direct investment; intellectual property rights; competition policy; government procurement; standards and technical barriers; trade and environment; and finally, a comprehensive analysis of the major issues coupled with concrete proposals to guide India's participation in the Doha Development Agenda. Table of Contents: 1. Introduction and Overview, by Aaditya Mattoo and Robert M. Stern 2. Computational Analysis of the Impact on India of the Uruguay Round and the Doha Development Agenda Negotiations, by Rajesh Chadha, Drusilla K. Brown, Alan V. Deardorff, and Robert M. Stern 3. Implications of Multifibre Arrangement Abolition for India and South Asia, by Sanjay Kathuria, Will J. Martin, and Anjali Bhardwaj 4. Services Issues and Liberalization in the Doha Development Agenda Negotiations: A Case Study of India, by Rajesh Chadha 5. Telecommunications Policy Reform in India, by Rajat Kathuria, Harsha Vardhana Singh, and Anita Soni 6. Economic Impact of Foreign Direct Investment in South Asia, by Pradeep Agrawal 7. An Indian Perspective on WTO Rules on Foreign Direct Investment, by Satya P. Das. 8. India as User and Creator of Intellectual Property: The Challenges Post-Doha, by Arvind Subramanian 9. Trade, Investment, and Competition Policy: An Indian Perspective, by Aditya Bhattacharjea 10. India's Accession to the Government Procurement Agreement: Identifying Costs and Benefits, by Vivek Saqib 12. Trade and Environment: Doha and Beyond, by Veena Jha 13. India and the Multilateral Trading System Post-Doha: Defensive or Proactive? By Aaditya Mattoo and Arvind Subramanian ''Robert Stern, a world-class international economist, and Aaditya Mattoo, a most distinguished economist with WTO experience, are a dream team. They have produced a fully informed and invaluable set of essays on India's interests in the Doha Round issues. This excellent volume must be read by every Indian policymaker involved in the Doha trade negotiations.''--Jagdish Bhagwati, Professor, Columbia University ''India's trade policy establishment is perceived to be somewhat wary of multilateral engagement, even though India is implementing substantial economic and trade policy reforms. Some essays in this excellent and well-researched volume may throw light on this paradox. More important, the essays take a hard look at India's interests and concerns with respect to international trade. They suggest ways that India could deploy its domestic reform agenda in the Doha Round negotiations to secure concessions from its trading partners, while using multilateral engagement to reinforce the domestic reform process and enhance the process's credibility. The book should prove of considerable value to policymakers, market participants, and other stakeholders.''--B. K. Zutshi, Former Ambassador and Permanent Representative of India to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)