Trade policy: India must reverse its tariff barrier uptrend

Free trade is out of favour in much of the world, with barriers being upped in the West, the World Trade Organization largely ineffective and globalization subject to a geopolitical split once again after a three-decade run. Not that it was a garden walk earlier, as fractious talks had left the globe with a jumble of bilateral deals instead of an orderly layout for a global market. India's import tariffs were slashed by a big policy shift towards openness in the 1990s, but had crept up on average by the time New Delhi signalled an emphatic trade reorientation in late…