Combating Anti-Competitive Practices in India: Analyzing the performance of India's Competition Commission

Competition is regarded as sine qua non for liberalized markets in economy. It is the life force ofmarkets that creates the best incentives for businesses to increase efficiency, drives their productivity andfuels innovation. 1 In other words, Competition is a powerful instrument to help in achieving themacroeconomic policy goals of the country and is recognized as key to “economic” efficiency which inthe Government context is important for maximizing the overall welfare of society. 2 Despite its allembracing benefits, healthy competition may not emerge on its own. Even the staunchest supporters of amarket economy admit that liberalized marketplaces cannot be taken as necessarily being competitive andeffective. They may nonetheless be rife with distortions brought on by powerful monopolistic companiesor confederacies of companies working together. The relationship between liberalized markets and theproductivity and innovation benefits they are thought to produce is broken by such distortions.3 In otherwords, fair and effective competition in markets is easier said than done. It does not come about by itself,but has to be created and enforced through competition policy and law. Hence, the need for a robustcompetition law and policy arises.4 Therefore, the Governments around the world have found it necessaryto prescribe ground rules for competition in the market place through competition law and policy.The competition policy addresses competition distortions in policies relating to trade, commerce,industry, business, investment, disinvestment, fiscal, taxation, IPR, procurement, etc. and endeavors toprovide competitive neutrality and level playing field. The competition law addresses anti-competitiveconduct of the enterprises by a mix of preventive, punitive and remedial measures.5 So, both competitionlegislation and competition policy are necessary to increase the market's competitive dynamics. Theysupport one another. While competition policy aims to repair the anti-competitive effects of variousgovernment policies and regulations and aid in the establishment of competitive markets, competition lawrestricts and penalizes anti-competitive acts by businesses operating in the market, i.e. solves marketfailures.6