Telecom is an interesting example. After many hiccups and much heartburn we have been able to create a consumer-friendly regulatory mechanism where we have better services, more phones, cheaper calls and many choices. In the process the MNCs have prospered, reasonably, and even the domestic PSU monopoly has changed for the better. The Insurance Regulatory Authority should be able to similarly maintain sanity when that sector opens up. No, because modern regulation of this kind not only creates a level playing field, it also reduces heavily the babu and the politician's discretionary powers.
Discretion is the mother of corruption, it is also the hallmark of the dictator.
Healthy, autonomous regulation, the TRAI, the IRA and SEBI, should take this discretion and thereby patronage away. Backed by an independent judiciary and media, it forms a formidable immune system which no ThreeBees in singleminded pursuit of god Profit can breach. It can create a modern market mechanism whereby class action suits rather than PILs will ensure corporate accountability. We may be so awfully messed up but we are not Africa. We must go out and embrace the MNCs, but only meanwhile we must build a protective wall, not of tariffs, but of institutions and laws that establish discretion-free consumer friendly regulation.