India and the Uruguay Round Trade Agreement

In this chapter, I map how India negotiates agreements under GATT’s Uruguay Round by showing how protectionism by developed countries in the 1980s affected the Indian economy and particular sectors like textiles, agriculture and services, in turn, shaping their interests for more open trade. The arrival of a new GATT round served as an apt opportunity for the Ministry of Commerce, the institution that sought to alleviate constraints facing Indian exporters in these and other sectors influencing the pragmatic tack adopted at negotiations. India’s practical, yet sober, approach at the Uruguay Round was also influenced by domestic interest groups, specifically business groups and lobbies, who were keen to secure greater market access for their goods and services.

India and the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control

In this chapter, I chronicle how India negotiates the FCTC by mapping how the globalization of tobacco in the 1980s and 1990s shaped India’s interests vis-à-vis multilateral tobacco control, how the key domestic institution, MOHFW, grappled with India’s tobacco use problem, which was itself the legacy of tobacco going global, and sought to address it through COTPA and how their intent for tougher tobacco rules, with support from interest groups advocating tougher tobacco control, shaped India’s approach at FCTC negotiations and ratification.

India and the Framework Convention on Climate Change

In this chapter, I outline how India negotiates the FCCC by unpacking how the international debates around global warming in the 1980s and its possible redress influenced India’s interests vis-à-vis climate change, privileging views that prioritized development, not climate, how two key institutions— MEA and MOEF wrestled with whether and how India was experiencing climate change and how their perspectives on global warming were informed and reinforced by two interest groups—TERI and CSE who worked with MEA and MOEF officials to sharpen India’s defensive climate strategy at UNFCCC negotiations and ratification thereafter.

Conclusion

This chapter recounts three key findings of the book with respect to India’s multilateral behaviour and distils some implications on what India’s experiences negotiating international rules suggest for global governance writ large.

Introduction

This chapter begins by revisiting a recent episode—India’s behaviour at the 2009 Copenhagen climate negotiations—that aptly exemplifies how scholars cover India’s multilateral record: high expectations accompanied by suboptimal commitments. This approach and various explanations, the chapter argues, blinds us from generating a coherent grounded perspective when it comes to India’s multilateral approach since they focus on outcomes, not the negotiations themselves.

India and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty

In this chapter, I unpack how India negotiates the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, recounting the transnational pressures pushing toward test ban negotiations and why those developments served India’s interests having pulled for such an agreement for decades. This legacy of disarmament diplomacy strongly influenced the approach adopted by the overseeing institution Ministry of External Affairs at CTBT negotiations where Indian diplomats strove to negotiate an agreement that placed uniform constraints vis-à-vis nuclear tests on both nuclear and non-nuclear weapon states. And finally, I distil how domestic interest groups, namely security and nuclear experts, shaped public debates concerning the CTBT which, in turn, gave MEA officials more space to determine whether to ratify or reject the treaty once it became clear that India’s strategy would not have produced the agreement they desired.