OPINION: Making a success of Competition Commission.

from BUSINESS LINE, July 23, 2008 If there is one master key to open the doors of the world's big league of developed nations for India to enter, it is competitiveness. This is to be understood not simply in the sense of warding off threats and challenges and beating targeted rivals in their own game and, if possible, in their own home ground, but in the sense of assuring a level- playing field through legally sanctioned pre-emptive action against practices injurious to the country's economic pr ogress.

Among them are: Monopolies and any form of contrived and excessive dominance of the market place, formation of cartels, horizontal, vertical and conglomerate combinations (mergers, acquisitions, amalgamations) militating against free and fair competition, and anti- competitive agreements in general.

Prevention of ill-effects arising from the above manipulations of the market is no doubt essential, but equally, if not even more greatly, essential is the need to be on guard against allowing market forces to have such an unbridled sway as to undermine the economic and social well-being of the people at large.

Promoting and sustaining competition is not an end in itself but only a means to achieve the ultimate objective of protecting the interests of consumers and enabling all other economic players to carry on their trade and business with equal freedom, subject to the cardinal principles of legitimacy, justice, equity and good conscience.

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