Friday, August 17, 2012

In India today focusing on the job

Are regulators in India today focusing on the job that they were supposed to do all along – regulating? Or have they, in the flow of industrialization and ‘development’, become collaborators with the very entities they were supposed to regulate? B&E brings an analysis of the current state of affairs and reality within and without these regulators! 

As much as one would like to praise Harry Markopolos for his commitment, there’s no way one can fail to notice the ignominious manner in which regulatory agencies – some of them supposedly the most transparent – failed to take any action, especially in a case of such proportions. This fortifies the viewpoint that when the stakes become higher than manageable, it is but inevitable that regulatory agencies, themselves deeply in collusion, deliberately choose avenues beneficial to those entities they were supposed to regulate in the first place (In one report, it was found out that even the US Attorney General’s family fund had invested in Madoff’s hedge fund). The situation is not much different in India, perhaps worse. If years ago, it was the license raaj that shamelessly doled out magnificent freebies to select companies at the cost of the nation, today, the same has been remodeled under a new scheme – regulatory bodies. Look around, and you’ll see the same regulatory bodies across sectors being lampooned with accusations of conspiratorial collusions with companies bent on twisting the ethical line. Whether it be SEBI’s repeated non action against clear insider trading, CCI’s non-completion of even one case since its creation, IRDA’s obsessive compulsiveness to pursue ULIP issues (instead of consumer redressal) or TRAI’s conjuring up of new auction policies that mysteriously advantage only a handful of select corporations, India seems to be getting the worst end of the stick from the agencies that were supposed to protect its growth. In this cover story, B&E does an incisive analysis of the current state of affairs at these top regulatory agencies and questions whether India can, in the future, continue to depend upon them!
 

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