India’s approach to free trade may seem contradictory.

Officials insist they are serious about striking new deals with the UK and the European Union (EU) and improving older deals with countries like Australia.

But they also complain that past free trade deals have “hurt” India or serve as a backdoor for unwanted Chinese goods.

It is therefore difficult to interpret the news that the Ministry of Commerce, which manages trade negotiations, plans to seek cabinet approval for a new negotiating strategy.

Loud grumblings from trade bureaucrats suggest that India may soon move further away from open markets.

However, there are also optimistic arguments for a new trade roadmap. Indian negotiators are stuck in the 20th century.

New traffic rules could drag them into the 21st. Indian officials still tend to view trade as a zero-sum game, with tariffs the only real lever.

They are legendarily defensive: their global counterparts often wonder how India can create new “red lines” out of nowhere, aimed at protecting one sector after another.

The potential gains from new markets are rarely taken into account – perhaps because deep down the bureaucracy does not believe that Indian entrepreneurs have the talent to turn new free trade agreements into attractive export opportunities.

The agreement that New Delhi signed with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in 2011 left a particular scar: imports from Asean grew much faster than India’s exports towards the block.

If the administration is so full of pessimists, what good is a new strategy? Negotiations with the EU suggest a plausible answer.

Negotiations were reopened in recent years – after a spectacular failure more than a decade ago – because European and Indian leaders believed closer economic integration was strategically necessary.

Economic security motivated this decision, not optimism about export-led growth.

A new mandate from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s office could serve to remind negotiators to assess trade from a broader perspective, one that prioritizes access to supply chains, finance and technology. strategic importance.

And this is not the only way in which India’s approach to business needs could be usefully expanded.

A narrow focus on tariffs ignores the many additional areas that make up modern trade agreements – from the transparency of labor regulations to environmental rules and the role of civil society.

Here, I have some sympathy for the civil servants. Ministries naturally protect their territory.

Why would one allow another’s staff to encroach on their domain?

As a result, while everyone is wondering how best to integrate environmental principles into trade rules, India continues to insist, as it did 30 years ago, that it are two completely different conversations.

Yet this leads to strange and counterproductive situations.

It makes no sense that India – where workplace regulations are among the most restrictive in the world – is afraid to discuss labor rules with potential business partners.

Here is a useful shortcut for understanding the Indian state. If a bureaucrat says “no” to something, it is not necessarily because she does not want it to happen.

Most likely, it’s because she’s not sure what will happen to her career if she says “yes.”

Any public official will ask the following questions regarding any decision: Are there any unintended consequences for which I could be held responsible? Am I stepping on someone else’s toes? Is this a new precedent that I will have to defend to my superiors?

Worse still, generalists who work in the civil service tend to be moved to other jobs as soon as they begin to gain enough confidence to say “yes” instead of “no.”

A new strategy for negotiators could go some way to solving these problems.

This could allow, for example, the establishment of a permanent cell of negotiators, or the addition of external expertise.

This could allow trade negotiators to discuss issues and regulations that would normally be the purview of other bureaucrats.

It’s a nice paradox: the absence of rules has long meant that Indian negotiators were notoriously inflexible.

Giving them a new set of guidelines might allow them to strike a deal or two. -Bloomberg

Mihir Sharma is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. The opinions expressed here are those of the author.