India: senior businessman calls for regulatory oversight body

Another well documented article dated 13 November completes the picture presented by a recent post. By the same author (a former chairman of the Telecoms authority) it calls for the establishment of an independent oversight body such as exists in the UK an other countries. This article summarizes the Indian RR approach and argues that the stock-taking of existing acts, which has been conducted in India in the past, should be viewed as only the first step of regulatory reforms. Now "it was expected that an institutional mechanism would be put in place towards producing high-quality regulations based on the touch-stone principles of legitimacy, efficacy, transparency and accountability. To accomplish this enormous task, an oversight body to provide structured directions to the regulatory regime of the country is needed. Such a body already exists in many developed countries.
In order for it to be effective, it should be located in the prime minister's office, vested with powers to independently coordinate, review and approve all regulatory policies and thus function as a focal point for quality regulation and good regulatory governance in the country. Such an oversight institution would provide a comprehensive regulatory management system through which regulations are developed, enforced and adjudicated, thus supporting the broader objectives of efficiency, transparency and accountability in governance.
Accountability of regulators cannot be addressed by a single piece of legislation. In the United Kingdom, there is a Committee of Parliamentarians which monitors the functioning of various regulators. Perhaps this can be experimented with in our country as the first immediate step for regulatory oversight."