| Free
trade agreements and bilateral investment treaties make
privileges for and treatment of foreign direct investors
legally binding. Thus, apart from the concerns of being
able to capture the ''real'' financial and economic contribution
of foreign direct investment inflows, FDI definitions
are also about protecting the ''rights'' of the so-defined
investors in the host country. Keeping this in mind,
the article analyses India's current FDI policy and
warns that if we define FDI within our national regulatory
framework too broadly to allow instruments and flexibility
that were earlier resisted, we would have already lost
most of the leverage in investment negotiations at the
regional and multilateral levels. |
