FTA with UK a damaging precedent, 'erodes' India's position in trade negotiations

By Nandita Lal 
The India-UK Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) is expected to be implemented in the first half of 2026. India’s journey with trade deals slowed down in the 2000s after past agreements backfired. But now, in 2025, it’s rushing into new talks with the US, UK, and EU, despite the cautionary history.
Alarmingly, the warnings from rights groups in both the UK and India have been largely ignored by the press.
The Forum for Trade Justice has warned that the UK-India CETA grants meager export gains while forcing India to surrender critical policy tools for health, data sovereignty, and industrial development.
Critically, the deal weakens intellectual property safeguards for affordable medicines, exposes non-personal government data to foreign access, and opens public procurement to foreign competition, undermining key domestic programs.
UK’s first from-scratch FTA with a developing country, it sets a dangerous precedent, the agreement establishes a deeply problematic model.
According to the Trade Justice Movement in a report published in December, as it promotes “UK corporate interests while constraining India’s ability to pursue inclusive, sustainable growth.”
TJM slammed the FTA for weak and unenforceable protections on labour, climate, and human rights, warning it entrenches colonial-era economic asymmetries and undermines India’s policy sovereignty.
TJM highlighted that the FTA’s labour chapter is entirely voluntary and excludes ILO fundamental conventions, notably Conventions 87 and 98 on freedom of association and collective bargaining, which India has not ratified.
REDRESS, another UK based rights group, has also strongly objected that the deal for not requiring India to ratify or adhere to the UN Convention Against Torture (UNCAT). Furthermore, it criticized the UK for its failure to conduct a human rights impact assessment or establish an Anti-Torture Plan to guide its trade policy.
UK based India Labour Solidarity (ILS) also censured the deals terms and called for the ratification by India of ILO Conventions 87, 98, 138, 182, and 189 with clear timelines.
On the environment, the FTA’s failings are stark.
Although the FTA mentions Common But Differentiated Responsibilities, it offers no concrete support for green technology transfer to India, failing to assist in its clean energy transition despite recognising its developmental needs, according to the TJM.
While the UK’s Trade Strategy claims trade can support net-zero goals, this deal prioritises market access. This stands in sharp contrast to the stronger, binding climate commitments in other UK FTAs, such as with New Zealand.
The group Transform Trade Transform Trade further noted this disparity, pointing out that in the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement, climate change is an “essential element.” It added, “There is nothing in the FTA to address the particular vulnerabilities in sectors like garment manufacturing, which are heavily gendered and high-risk.
While UK based groups like TJM, ILS and REDRESS have had the opportunity to input their into the consultation process by parliamentary committee, but these have been ultimately ignored by the UK government in favour of a commercial agenda. In India, any civil society consultations are absent.
The central, unanswered question: Given this overwhelming critique, a pressing question remains: Why is India accepting these terms—where the projected economic benefit is negligible, and the agreement sets a damaging precedent that undermines its position in all future trade negotiations?
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Nandita Lal writes on extractivism and militarism. Her work has been published in Codepink, New Arab, Canary, Socialist Worker, and Counterfire. Source: CFA