Are India's existing FTAs as detrimental to its interest as RCEP?

The basic building bloc of the proposed RCEP - the Asean FTA - continues to be one-sided

The government has claimed that other nations' insistence on tariff removal and access to India's vast untapped domestic market, without offering anything in return, ultimately forced India out of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) deal. But New Delhi's existing trade deal with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) bloc, on which RCEP is based, shows these aren't new complaints, say experts.

The Asean-India Free Trade Agreement (AIFTA) with the 10-nation Asean bloc came into effect on January 1, 2010 amid much fanfare. "It was India's second deal with a regional bloc and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was confident