Does the WTO oblige India to liberalise legal services? Media gets it wrong again.
An article in the DNA gets it wrong when its writes:
India, under the WTO obligations, is required to open up its legal sector, as this comes under ’services’ category.
Another example of how Indian media reporting on WTO issues can get things completely wrong. The GATS negotiation on services do not “require” India to open up legal services. Here, I am not on the issue of whether liberalisation of trade in legal services would be beneficial as such to the Indian legal industry, Indian businesses or to the Indian economy. But any GATS commitment by India on legal services would be entirely voluntary.
