Indian Express — Explained: Why India has said no to regional trade pact RCEP

India believes that the RCEP trade deal doesn't provide adequate protection against possible surges of imported goods. In particular, India is concerned about cheap Chinese goods flooding the domestic market. 

The Indian Express
Explained: Why India has said no to regional trade pact RCEP

India’s RCEP Refusal, Russia’s Eurasian Vision, and Next Week’s BRICS Summit — Andrew Korybko

Andrew Korybko is more pessimistic than Pepe Escobar on this. I think he may be a bit too pessimistic. India's strategic alignment is a balancing act for the government in power. India has along history of playing the US and Russia against each other for its own advantage. The really big issue is the relationship of India and China, traditional enemies that are still locked in various disputes over boundaries. Here again, India is using the US as a hedge with respect to China.

Getting the Eurasian alignment right, both in the East and relative to the West is going to occupy the next several decades at least, and the Modi government is not going to be around that long to deal with it. So we will see. 

India, Russia and China are wily players, focused on national interest, which includes regional peace, world peace, and a prospering global market to which they have access. But that all have domestic issues also, and these limit international flexibility. Hovering over this process is a Western hegemony led by the US that doesn't want to lose global dominance after having it for half a millennium.

GlobalResearch
India’s RCEP Refusal, Russia’s Eurasian Vision, and Next Week’s BRICS Summit
Andrew Korybko

Pepe Escobar — The RCEP train left the station, and India, behind

The barely disguised secret is that India’s economy, as the historical record shows, is inherently protectionist. There’s no way a possible removal of agricultural tariffs protecting farmers would not provoke a social cataclysm....

The Vineyard of the Saker
The RCEP train left the station, and India, behind
Pepe Escobar

East Asia Forum — Maybe India isn't Interested in American-Style Trade Rules

On 2 May 2016, US President Barack Obama published an op-ed in the Washington Post in an attempt to bolster support for the highly controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The TPP has become a political football in the US election primaries, with all of the leading candidates for President expressing their opposition to it.

Obama’s main argument was that the US should be writing the trade rules of the 21st century, rather than ‘countries like China’.

Obama was alluding to the latest round of negotiations for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), recently held in Perth. This agreement includes China, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, India and the 10 countries that make up ASEAN. Obama seems to be concerned that RCEP won’t mirror the TPP’s stance on issues like intellectual property protection.

Health and environmental groups, on the other hand, are worried that RCEP could indeed be a TPP 2.0. They are particularly concerned that it may make life-saving medicines more costly and threaten the right of states to regulate in the public interest.…

Economy Watch
Maybe India isn't Interested in American-Style Trade Rules

East Asia Forum