Darpan Jain Has Spent Seven Years Negotiating India’s Services Trade. Where Are the Results?

Darpan Jain has been at the Department of Commerce since February 2019. In bureaucratic terms, that is an extraordinary tenure — the Cabinet has extended his central deputation twice, first for two years in 2024 and then for a further year beyond February 2026. Seven years in the same chair, in a service where most officers rotate every two or three. The question that nobody in North Block seems to be asking is: what, precisely, has that chair produced?

The answer, if you read the numbers rather than the press releases, is a services trade architecture that looks impressive on paper and underdelivers in practice.

The USD 62 Billion Question

Between 2021 and 2025, India signed seven free trade agreements with substantive services chapters — the Mauritius CECPA, UAE CEPA, Australia ECTA, EFTA TEPA, UK CETA, Oman CEPA, and New Zealand FTA. The combined services trade with all seven FTA partner groups reached USD 62.4 billion in 2024, representing approximately 13.8 per cent of India’s total services trade. That sounds like a number worth celebrating. It is not.

India’s total services exports hit USD 248.1 billion in 2024. These seven agreements — the product of years of negotiation — account for less than a seventh of total services trade. The sectoral composition is worse: approximately 70 per cent of India’s services exports to these FTA partners remain concentrated in telecommunications, computer, and information services. IT and business process outsourcing. The same sectors that would have grown with or without any agreement, because India’s comparative advantage in software services does not require a treaty to function.

Mutual Recognition: Four Years of Nothing

The Mauritius CECPA — India’s first agreement with an African country, effective April 2021 — contained what was supposed to be a breakthrough provision. Article 6.11(3) mandated that professional bodies in architecture, engineering, medical, dental, accounting, auditing, nursing, veterinary, and company secretarial services negotiate and conclude mutual recognition agreements within twelve months. That deadline expired in April 2022.

As of May 2026, not a single MRA has been concluded. Four years past the deadline. The agreement’s own escape clause — Article 6.11(6), which provides that delays in concluding MRAs shall not constitute a breach — reads less like a pragmatic safeguard and more like an advance admission that nobody expected these provisions to be implemented.

The pattern repeats. The EFTA TEPA’s Annex 6.D provides for qualification recognition — no operational MRAs. The UK CETA’s Annex 8A establishes a professional services framework — implementation is in its “earliest stages.” When every single agreement that Jain’s division has negotiated contains mutual recognition provisions and none of them have been implemented, the problem is not with any single partner. It is structural. It is institutional. And it sits in the Joint Secretary’s office.

Mode 4: The Promise That Never Lands

Movement of natural persons — GATS Mode 4 — is supposed to be India’s primary offensive interest in every services negotiation. India has the world’s largest pool of qualified professionals in IT, engineering, and healthcare. Every FTA signed during Jain’s tenure includes Mode 4 provisions. Every single one preserves the partner country’s existing immigration constraints virtually unchanged.

The EFTA TEPA is the clearest example. Five categories of natural person movement were negotiated. Switzerland’s existing annual work permit quotas — 8,500 per year, split between 4,000 L-permits and 4,500 B-permits — remain unchanged by the TEPA. EU/EFTA priority rules still apply. Contractual service suppliers are limited to three months. Medical and dental services remain unbound. India negotiated an agreement that preserves the status quo and called it liberalisation.

The UK CETA locks in short-term visas but offers no long-term promises on settlement or extended professional mobility. Australia, which was supposed to be the success story, now rejects 40 per cent of Indian student visas and has doubled its graduate-visa fee. These are the partners where India’s services negotiator was supposed to have secured breakthroughs.

The Positive-List Problem

All seven agreements use positive-list scheduling — where only sectors explicitly listed are open for liberalisation. This is the cautious, GATS-model approach. It contrasts with the negative-list approach used by agreements such as the CPTPP, which is generally considered more liberalising because everything is open unless explicitly excluded.

Positive lists provide flexibility. They also provide cover for doing very little. When you only commit to liberalise sectors where India already dominates — IT, business process outsourcing — you are not negotiating services trade liberalisation. You are documenting the status quo. The fact that after seven years and seven agreements, India has not once attempted a hybrid approach or sector-specific negative lists for areas of comparative advantage suggests a negotiating posture designed to avoid risk rather than capture opportunity.

Where He Came From: The Bengaluru Record

Before arriving at North Block, Jain served in Karnataka — as Deputy Commissioner of Mysuru, Deputy Commissioner of Dharwad and Yadgir, Commissioner for Industrial Development, Director of Industries and Commerce in Bengaluru, and Special Commissioner (Solid Waste Management) at BBMP.

The city he left behind is now a case study in administrative failure. Bengaluru recorded the world’s third-slowest traffic in 2024. A 16-kilometre commute takes two hours during peak times. Over 10,000 potholes were identified in 2025, and despite repair expenditure rising to Rs 12.25 crore, commuters report no visible improvement. High-flying tech firms are hitting potholes — entrepreneurs now openly discuss relocating from what was supposed to be India’s technology capital. Nearly half the city relies on borewells that dry up in summer.

None of this is solely Jain’s fault. Bengaluru’s problems predate and postdate any single officer. But the pattern is instructive: a career spent in administrative postings where the gap between institutional ambition and ground-level reality remains vast.

The Assets

Jain’s immovable property return filed on 30 January 2026 declares three properties. A 3BHK duplex flat in Nava Raipur’s Aravalli Vihar (present value Rs 70 lakh), agriculture land in Village Kot, Dadri, Gautam Buddha Nagar district (Rs 25 lakh), and more agriculture land in Daluarajpura, Gautam Buddha Nagar (Rs 38 lakh). Total declared present value: Rs 1.33 crore. Annual income from the Nava Raipur property: Rs 6.42 lakh. Basic pay as of January 2026: Rs 1,88,200 per month.

He also holds a residential plot in Faridabad (Plot 1936, Sector 49, measuring 197 square metres, purchased in 1995 for Rs 2.41 lakh) whose current collector rate valuation is approximately Rs 91.9 lakh. And a plot at Jakkur Layout, Bengaluru — allotted by the Mysore Civil Service Housing Cooperative Society, a society of IAS, IFS, and IPS officers of the Karnataka cadre — measuring 384.86 square metres, acquired for Rs 15.13 lakh, with a current sub-registrar guidance value of approximately Rs 3.07 crore.

There is nothing illegal about any of this. A 2001-batch officer with LSE and IIT Delhi credentials who has been drawing a Level 14 salary for years can accumulate property. But it is worth noting that the Jakkur plot — allocated by a society of IAS, IFS, and IPS officers — has appreciated from Rs 15 lakh to over Rs 3 crore. The civil service takes care of its own. The question is whether the professionals whose mobility Jain was supposed to negotiate — the engineers, the architects, the accountants — have been taken care of with equal diligence.

Contempt in Kerala

In December 2024, the Kerala High Court heard a contempt case (CC No. 2875/2024) in which K.S. Jeejimol, a junior Hindi translator at the Export Inspection Agency in Kochi, alleged that Jain — in his capacity as Joint Secretary and Director of the Export Inspection Council — had failed to comply with a court judgment within the directed timeline. The case was adjourned to January 2025, with the respondents seeking an extension for compliance. The Export Inspection Council falls under the Department of Commerce. Court orders are not suggestions.

The Strategic Failure

The numbers that matter are these. India’s services exports grew at a CAGR of 14.8 per cent between 2020 and 2024. The UAE CEPA — the strongest performer — showed export growth 17.8 percentage points above the global baseline. That is a meaningful FTA effect. But it is driven almost entirely by IT services that were already flowing. The Mauritius CECPA’s 25 per cent export growth merely tracks India’s overall global growth of 25.4 per cent — suggesting zero FTA-attributable effect.

Seven agreements. Seven positive lists. Zero concluded MRAs. Mode 4 provisions that preserve partner-country quotas. A sectoral concentration where 70 per cent of FTA services exports are in IT — the one sector that needs FTAs least. Financial services exports to the UAE at USD 52 million against USD 1 billion to the UK, despite the UAE CEPA being three years older than the UK CETA. No hybrid scheduling attempted. No negative lists for sectors of comparative advantage. Implementation monitoring that does not exist.

Darpan Jain has been in this chair for seven years. The Cabinet has extended his tenure twice. He has now been elevated to Additional Secretary and named chief negotiator for India-US trade talks. The reward for seven years of agreements that commit to liberalisation on paper and preserve the status quo in practice is a promotion and a bigger negotiation.

In the Indian Administrative Service, the longest tenures are rarely given to officers who deliver the most. They are given to officers who cause the least trouble.