True, the details of these agreements are not yet clear, but they indubitably represent a basic shift, wholly unwarranted and on entirely spurious theoretical grounds, in India’s development strategy. These agreements are typically justified on the grounds that they promote ‘export-led growth’. This development strategy, based on a protected home market, apart from its avoiding undermining other countries’ growth prospects that a conventional external ‘export-led-growth’ strategy involves, is superior to the latter in two other respects. Second, the external ‘export-led growth’ strategy is fundamentally anti-­democratic, unlike the protected home-market-based one. India’s post-Independence development strategy had been essentially a protected home-market-based one.

Source: The Telegraph March 04, 2026 02:38 UTC