ISAS Working Papers

India’s trade policy architecture has undergone a phenomenal metamorphosis over the last six decades. The objective of this paper is to understand the ‘factors’ that have shaped India’s trade policy architecture at various junctures in its development path. In particular, the paper will identify whether domestic economic compulsions or international economic environment have played the key role in determining the coordinates of India’s trade policy architecture over time. The paper broadly concludes that India’s trade policy architecture has remained by and large homegrown, dictated by domestic imperatives, both economic and political, rather than by the forces of the international economic order. Even at the WTO, India’s stance has been shifting rather dramatically, but much of it may be linked to India’s ‘self interest’ as opposed to international compulsions.