India's Comprehensive Trade Agreements

India's recent overlapping comprehensive trade agreements, which combine accelerated goods trade liberalisation with deeper and wider liberalisation in agriculture, "investment" and services, have wide ramifications on her development despite the extent of liberalisation that the country has undertaken over the last two decades. It is argued that the growing trade deficit and the changed nature of recent foreign direct investment inflows already throw up industrial policy and financial regulatory challenges before India for developing dynamic competitiveness and reducing financial fragility in the economy. The investment provisions in the recent comprehensive trade agreements compound the dissonance between India's development needs and industrial and macroeconomic policies by putting World Trade Organisation-plus constraints on the country's regulatory ability.