The Recommendations

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Conclusions and Additional Recommendations

The Recommendations

1. Technology must be treated as a distinctive sector, and its intersectional relationship with policy must be determined with a policy scheme which has a coherent yet unique legal infrastructure. The Indian State has to ensure that the infrastructure is unique to Indian realities, and is not affected by the policy qualms developed due to diplomatic relationship, but itself is domestic and autonomous enough to shape Indian foreign policy avenues. 2. Sector-specific regulators must be established to deal with matters related to technology law and regulation. 3. When it comes to shaping policy ideas in the realm of disruptive technologies, especially artificial intelligence, the

Indian state must think out of the box and not pander around remnant ideas, to create a system of equilibrium. Instead, legal and policy adaptivity of the polity itself must be tested properly, so that nuanced and creative ideas are encouraged in technology policy. Again, they have to be domestically independent. 4. Deriving from not only academic resources, but also through boots-on-the-ground work & surveys – is the approach that needs to be taken with regards to governance in technology law. If Coherentist approaches are needed - it is important for the legislators to understand at the grassroot level - the implications of the same. If a technocratic approach is preferred, the domestic policy coordinates must be calibrated with some precision to gain leverage in the international community, which needs to be taken into consideration. 5. In case of Regulatory-Instrumentalist approaches, regulations need to be kept in check by bodies to ensure practical if not idealistic working of the machinery.

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Regulatory Sovereignty in India: Indigenizing CompetitionTechnology Approaches, ISAIL-TR-001

6. Although digital & disruptive markets are constantly adapting & evolving, a few general mechanisms could be adopted such as a. Development of tools to define Markets where a large part of the sales take place through barter transactions & to assess the quality-adjusted price paid for a good or service in a barter transaction with a zero, or near zero monetary price (Committee for the study of the digital platforms, Stigler Center, 2019 p. 75). In digital markets, payments through barter are common. b. Mechanisms for purposes of evaluating potential competition from new firms & future innovators & entrants could be incepted. In digital markets, due to high concentration levels, network effects & control over data, it actually ends up becoming difficult to dislodge a firm once it has become dominant. Thus, attention needs to be awarded to entry conditions & the likelihood of innovation (Committee for the study of the digital platforms, Stigler Center, 2019 p. 75). The EC report states that in order to encourage the entry of firms & help them in attracting customers, it is important to ensure that multi-homing & switching are possible (Crémer, et al., 2019). c. Defining two interrelated markets, in case of platform markets since, market definition is complex in platforms which are multi sided, users on different sides of a platform may have divergent interests, definition a single two-sided market in all cases may obscure the analysis (Stigler Center, 2019, p.75). d. Mechanisms for addressing & evaluating how technological platforms are able to take advantage of consumer biases & allocate consumers to their platform by creating difficulties for them to switch to alternatives. The ECreport suggests that even where consumers harm cannot be measured, practices indulged in by firms aimed at reducing competition on the face of it should be prohibited in the absence of evidence of consumer welfare (Crémer, Montjoye, and Schweitze, 2019, p.3).

7. Amendment of the Laws through Changes in Existing Legal

Principles a. The law relating to predatory pricing needs to be broadened in its scope. The policy of not attracting over enforcement needs to be dropped. b. The imposing of the burden of proof on the plaintiff/informant/complainant should be relaxed or even shifted to the defendant/respondent perhaps in case of sophisticated digital markets where the respondent/defendant has greater knowledge & better access to relevant intelligence. c. The standard of proof also needs to be reviewed. In the case of digital platforms, there may be an underlying risk of under enforcement of the law if the courts insist on a high degree of probability of harm. d. The concept of “intermediation power” may be recognized, in addition to buyer-seller power. e. The threshold for third party access to data may be lowered. f. Firms with superior market power to obstruct should be prohibited from multi-homing so as to prevent “tipping” of the markets. 8. We recommend that for disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence, there should be a case to develop regulatory sandbox frameworks for proper auditability per se. That would democratise and even justify the regulatory considerations by the sector-specific regulators in the Union

Government. 9. Knowledge economy approaches, as are regulated by standards of education and skill development, must mobilize the Indian talent, which creates better conditions in India, and is not becoming of an imperative to endorse exports of

Indian talent, because that is a demographic loss of intelligible brains, and would not be commonsensically contributory to the Indian R&D and the Indian economy. 10. Targeting knowledge vacuums is an imperative, and the

Indian state must take that into a larger account. 11. Indic languages must be considered a special priority as a medium of learning, along with English as a secondary mandatory language for communication and reading, to fill up the vacuums of opportunities for students and

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