Trace how India's trade-protection institutions evolved from the colonial Tariff Board to present-day trade remedies.

The Fiscal Commission (1921–22) recommended "discriminating protection", meaning tariffs only for selected industries that qualified. That led to India's first Tariff Board (1923). Over the next century, Indian trade protection moved from shielding young industries case by case to WTO-compatible remedies against unfair trade.

Phase I: Colonial Tariff Boards (1923–47)

• Boards were ad hoc and industry-specific. They began with iron and steel and took evidence from industry bodies.
• Cotton Textile Enquiry (1926–27): the Ahmedabad Millowners' Association blamed the industry's depression on a bumper US cotton crop and falling farm incomes [1]. The Board's findings were published in 1927 [2].
• Limitation: recommendations were only advisory. The final decision rested with a colonial government that put imperial trade interests first.

Phase II: Statutory protection in a planned economy (1951–91)

• The Tariff Commission Act, 1951 created a permanent statutory body for protection and price inquiries [3].
• Licensing, quantitative restrictions and high tariffs now did most of the protecting, so the Commission mattered less. Parliament repealed the Act in 1976 [4].

Phase III: Liberalisation and WTO-era trade remedies (1991–present)

• Shift in purpose: after tariffs were cut and quantitative restrictions removed, protection became a targeted response to dumping, subsidies and import surges under GATT Article VI and the WTO agreements. The legal basis is the Customs Tariff Act, 1975: anti-dumping duty (s. 9A), countervailing duty (s. 9) and safeguards (s. 8B).
• Tariff Commission revived (1997) by merging the former Bureau of Industrial Costs and Prices into it. It is now an advisory body on tariffs and costs [5].
• DGTR (2018): a single body that merged the separate anti-dumping, safeguards and quantitative-restriction safeguard offices. Investigations take about 9–10 months, and a helpdesk supports MSMEs [6].
• Checks: the DGTR only recommends and the Finance Ministry decides. Appeals go to CESTAT.

Tariff Board (1923) → Tariff Commission (1951) → Repeal (1976)
      → Tariff Commission revived (1997) → DGTR (2018)

Fig.: From advisory boards to a single quasi-judicial trade-remedy body

India's institutions have moved from colonial boards answering to the empire, to planning-era statutory bodies, to a rules-based trade-remedy system. The next step is faster and more transparent DGTR investigations, with industry and consumer interests weighed together. That way protection serves Atmanirbhar competitiveness, as the 1920s goal of discriminating protection intended, rather than sheltering inefficiency.