We are too weak to tackle Frankenstein's monsters.

Last week India pulled out of negotiations to create a large Asian trading bloc, named the Regional Comprehensive Trading Partnership (RCEP) comprised of 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and five nations, Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea, with which they have free trade agreements (FTA). India was to be the 16th member. "It was meant to be the biggest free trade agreement with 40 percent of global commerce and 35 percent of GDP involving 16 countries, home to 3.6 billion people or half the population of the world." "Refusing to join the RCEP, PM Modi said the pact does not address satisfactorily India's outstanding issues and concerns." The problem with the deal is that "all negotiations occur in secret among member governments, and the public has no idea exactly what is being negotiated", wrote Prof V Dahejia. These deals are like "Frankenstein's monsters that do little to liberalize trade but do a lot to pursue the narrower agenda of stakeholders looking for market access". India has trade deficits with 11 of the 15 countries. "India's trade deficit with these countries has almost doubled in the last five-six years - from $54 billion in 2013-14 to $105 billion in 2018-19." Previous trade pacts have not worked well for India and RCEP is basically a "Chinese gameplan to save its manufacturing industries from crumbling under their own weight". India is the largest producer of milk in the world but, "New Zealand is selling milk powder at Rs 160 per kg. We are selling it at Rs 280 per kg." Besides, a cow yields 13 liters of milk in New Zealand, whereas output of Indian cows is a pathetic 3.5 liters. Also, milk in India is a mixture of cow and buffalo milk and there is no buffalo milk in either the US or Europe. Between 2014-15 and 2018-19, India's trade deficit increased from $13 billion to $22 billion with Asean, from $9 billion to $12 billion with South Korea, and from $5 billion to $8 billion with Japan," wrote Prof D Nayyar. "Over the same period, India's trade deficit with China rose from $48 billion to $54 billion, while that with Australia and New Zealand went up from $8 billion to $9 billion. India does have a comparative advantage in software exports, but that is not true of business services, financial services or telecommunication services, where other RCEP countries, such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and China, are far ahead. Much the same could be said about investment." Moody's cut India's credit rating to negative recently, leading to outraged incredulity from our experts. Trouble is that fiscal deficit is already 92.6% of the target for the whole financial year even with a one time raid of Rs 1.76 trillion on Reserve Bank reserves. How can we enter a team when we are weak in every sector? We can only lose.