Too Much Power With Commission

Three dissent notes and one supplementary note have been appended to the report of the Competition Policy Committee (CPC). All of them profess uneasiness about the powers vested in the Competition Commission of India (CCI).

In his preface, chairman S V S Raghavan says the report, notwithstanding "conceptual differences", is based on consensus.

Director-general of the National Council of Applied Economic Research Rakesh Mohan says the report could "possibly stop the growth of the Indian economy in its tracks". He says he has reservations about the new authority and its discretionary powers.

Mohan recommends that the CCI be given only an advocacy role for three to five years, or rigid bureaucratic structures could vitiate the spirit of competition.

 

In his dissent note, Sudhir Mulji says anti-monopoly laws in India are different from the rest of the world. "The government is seeking to shift the focus from curbing monopolies to promoting competition in order to shift the economy from planning to a free economy. But the report only reinforces the `nanny syndrome' and advocates a return to the Licence Raj."

According to Mulji, control and regulation has led to the soft state that India has become. But instead of deliberating on the economic concept of competition, the report has concerned itself with the conduct and behaviour of economic agents. "Regulating economies through laws, especially statute laws is most unwise," he says.

In his dissent note, P M Narielvala has confined himself to the pre-merger notification above specified limits. Narielvala says that mergers and amalgamations are relevant to countries concerned with the fact that competition is not destroyed by this process.

In India, however, companies are very small and mergers have not kept pace with the need for large companies to counter threats from foreign giants.