Geeta Singh
Regulation and deregulation should be regarded as instruments rather than absolutes. Effective governance requires avoiding both excessive control and uncritical reliance on markets, instead applying these tools with prudence, humility, and vigilance, treating regulation as a compass that guides rather than confines.
Every society struggles with the same fundamental question: how much control is enough? Too much regulation risks becoming a cage, confining enterprise, stifling innovation, and burdening citizens with bureaucracy. Too little regulation, on the other hand, creates a void in an open field where powerful actors dominate, consumers suffer, and crises brew unchecked. The regulatory conundrum is therefore not about choosing between cage and void, but about finding the space in between. It is in this contested middle ground that the idea of responsive regulation emerges: an approach that adapts, balances, and remains attuned to human welfare.
The case for regulation rests on protection and stability. At times, regulation itself becomes the problem, it is too rigid, too slow, too disconnected from reality. Yet the case for deregulation cannot be dismissed as reckless idealism. History offers enough reminders of what happens when rules are absent. Unregulated factories in the 19th century produced Dickensian working conditions; unchecked banking speculation in the early 20th century plunged the world into the Great Depression; and more recently, the absence of environmental guardrails has accelerated climate change with devastating consequences for communities. In all such cases, regulation emerged as society’s corrective, an acknowledgment that unrestrained pursuit of profit often carries costs borne not by firms but by ordinary citizens. Regulation, at its best, is society saying: never again.
Overregulation fosters inefficiency, stifles innovation, and entrenches monopolies by raising barriers to entry. Here, deregulation serves as oxygen, releasing industries from suffocation. Nowhere is this more vividly illustrated than in India’s telecom sector.
For decades, telecommunication was tightly regulated, with state monopolies controlling infrastructure, pricing, and access. In the early 1990s, a simple phone call was a luxury, sometimes costing several rupees per minute and requiring months of waiting for a connection. Deregulation transformed this landscape. The entry of private players, competitive bidding, and policy liberalisation unleashed a revolution. Call rates plummeted from double digits per minute to virtually zero; mobile penetration leapt from less than 1% in 1995 to over 85% today; and what was once a privilege of the few became the right of the many. An act of deregulation thus humanised technology making it affordable, accessible, and democratic.
But the story did not end there. The very success of deregulation created new challenges: spectrum mismanagement, predatory pricing wars, and consolidation that pushed smaller firms out of the market. Today, India’s telecom sector is effectively reduced to three major players, raising new questions of consumer choice and fair competition. The lesson is unmistakable: deregulation opens the gates, but without smart and continuous regulation, even liberated markets can relapse into oligopolies or instability.
This is why the debate must shift from “regulate versus deregulate” to the idea of responsive regulation. Rules must be adaptive, sector-specific, and forward-looking. Regulation should not be an iron cage but a living framework, one that listens, learns, and evolves. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) illustrates this approach. In an era when personal data became the new oil of the digital economy, the GDPR established clear rights for citizens, strict responsibilities for companies, and significant penalties for abuse. Yet it did so without banning digital innovation outright; instead, it sought to build trust, transparency, and accountability into the system. By balancing consumer protection with business continuity, the GDPR represents what “smart regulation” looks like in the digital age.
Ultimately, regulation is about people, not paperwork. When telecom deregulation put a phone in the hands of a farmer in Bihar or a student in a small town of Tamil Nadu, it did more than reduce tariffs, it expanded opportunity, dignity, and connection. Conversely, when financial deregulation allowed reckless lending in 2008, it was not banks that bore the brunt but families who lost homes and jobs. These lived realities are why the regulatory conundrum cannot be settled in the abstract.
In conclusion, it is not to choose between regulation or deregulation as absolutes. Both are tools, not ends in themselves. The real question is whether we have the wisdom to use them judiciously. As societies grow more complex, governance must avoid the twin temptations of overbearing control and blind faith in markets. In that sense, the true regulatory art is not deciding once and for all, but deciding again and again, with humility, vigilance, and a view to human welfare. Ultimately, regulation is not a destination, but a compass that is guiding societies through uncertainty without ever fixing them in place.
