Situating India’s Mode 4 Commitments in Geopolitics and Political Economy: The Case of GATS 2000 Proposal, IndiaSingapore CECA and India-ASEAN TiS

Abstract

India has always sought to exploit its export potential in ‘Mode 4’ of delivery of services involving the movement of natural persons. However, it has not been able to realise its offensive interest in Mode 4 services exports due to legal, economic, political, and geopolitical factors. This Article seeks to contextualise pivotal moments in the formulation of India’s Mode 4 strategy by situating these negotiating stances against larger political and geopolitical phenomena. It focuses on India’s ambitious proposal tabled in November 2000 which suggested comprehensive amendments to GATS and demanded significant changes in immigration and labour laws. Rather than viewing this proposal as a result of the growth in IT exports in 1995-2000, this Article argues that the proposal should be understood as a continuation of a process that started in the mid-1980s which involved the Indian state playing a more open and proactive role in the growth of the IT sector. The Article then shifts its focus to the chapter on Mode 4 in the India-Singapore Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement. This chapter is contextualized by India’s Look East Policy. It traces the economic and geopolitical factors that led to the negotiation of the free trade agreement and the overwhelming anti-immigration sentiment which ultimately led to its undoing. Lastly, the India-ASEAN Trade in Services Agreement is evaluated. While this agreement fulfilled the geopolitical ambitions of the Look East Policy, it failed to improve the level of services liberalisation set out in the GATS. We argue that the India-ASEAN Trade in Services Agreement demonstrates the costs of an excessive focus on geopolitics during the negotiation of free trade agreements.