Regional Cooperation for Whom? A Study of ASEAN–India FTA in the Context of Plantation/Tropical Products

On account of multilateral and regional integration global governance is taking over hitherto unreached spaces of policy making including internal/domestic policies of nation-states. This is undertaken with the overriding objective of facilitating global accumulation of capital. Because of the competition to woo capital, the nation-states are under pressure to favour monopoly capital even at the expense of other interests such as those of labour, environment, local capital, gender, etc. But the success of capital is fast eroding its social constituency. The spread of peoples’ movements for democracy is a sign of this growing incongruence in the system. Nation-states will be constrained by popular opinion to take positions that are not necessarily friendly to monopoly capital. But they cannot do that in isolation. They will need to build up global collective action in favour of an alternative governance system that allow democracy to recapture its meaning, and help sustain national economic habitats and the economic diversity they conserve, against the forces of devastating economic homogenization abetted by unregulated competition. The article supports the above propositions drawing evidence from the case of tropical products. It builds the case for regional cooperation for governing trade and competition as opposed to the mainstream model of unbridled competition and unregulated markets.