WTO, India and Emerging Global Trade Challenges in Higher Education

Today's world is far different from what it used to be few decades ago. As knowledge becomes more important, so does higher education. In World Trade Organisation (WTO), the objective of General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) was to establish a multilateral framework for services similar to trade in goods involving reduction in tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade. GATS covered all the four modes of supply, i.e. cross-border supply, consumption abroad, commercial presence and presence of natural persons. Out of the twelve basic and miscellaneous service sectors identified under GATS schedules, educational services constitute an important sector. The major challenge of all education is to develop an efficient and pro-active quality oriented education system, which fine-tunes itself regularly to meet the changing demand of WTO. Thus India must realise the impending threats of trade in education and try to convert these into opportunities. With many more countries waiting to tap this lucrative sector, India has to take the lead on behalf of the developing countries by using WTO as the forum and a worldclass education sector as the weapon to demand its due share of the colossal education market.