LIJDLR

Regulatory Capture

REGULATORY CAPTURE IN INDIA: WHEN REGULATORS SERVE THE ELITE

Volume IV Issue II /

REGULATORY CAPTURE IN INDIA: WHEN REGULATORS SERVE THE ELITE Jenimettilda J, LL.M, 4th Semester, Student at Tamil Nadu Dr. Ambedkar Law University (India) Download Manuscript doi.org/10.70183/lijdlr.2026.v04.223 Regulatory bodies play an important role in modern governance because they are responsible for overseeing industries, enforcing legal standards, and ensuring that economic activities are carried out in a fair and accountable manner. In India, several independent regulatory institutions have been established in sectors such as telecommunications, banking, securities markets, environmental protection, competition law, and natural resources. These bodies are expected to function impartially and strike a balance between economic development and public welfare. However, concerns have increasingly been raised about regulatory capture, a situation in which regulators become influenced by the very groups they are meant to regulate. When this happens, regulatory decisions may begin to favour powerful corporations, influential business interests, or political actors rather than the interests of the wider public. This article examines the idea of regulatory capture in the Indian context and explores the ways in which elite influence can affect regulatory decision-making. It discusses the development of the concept and its relevance in contemporary regulatory governance. The study further analyses how regulatory capture may arise in important sectors such as telecommunications, environmental administration, financial regulation, and natural resource management. It argues that regulatory capture should be viewed as a form of elite class deviance because it allows powerful groups to secure advantages through institutional influence while often remaining beyond direct legal scrutiny. The article also highlights the wider consequences of regulatory capture, including reduced public trust, weakened accountability, distorted market conditions, and challenges to democratic governance. In light of these concerns, the study suggests a number of reforms aimed at improving transparency, strengthening institutional independence, enhancing accountability, and encouraging greater public participation in regulatory processes. Such measures are necessary to ensure that regulatory institutions continue to serve the public interest and remain resistant to undue influence from powerful elite groups.

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REGULATORY SEQUENCING AND ADAPTIVE GOVERNANCE: A COMPARATIVE LEGAL STUDY OF BANKING AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS REFORM IN INDIA, THE UNITED STATES, THE EUROPEAN UNION, JAPAN, AND BRAZIL

Volume IV Issue II /

REGULATORY SEQUENCING AND ADAPTIVE GOVERNANCE: A COMPARATIVE LEGAL STUDY OF BANKING AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS REFORM IN INDIA, THE UNITED STATES, THE EUROPEAN UNION, JAPAN, AND BRAZIL Mr. Susen Kamble, LL.M (Constitutional and Administrative Law), Student at National Law Institute University, Bhopal (India) Download Manuscript doi.org/10.70183/lijdlr.2026.v04.219 This article examines whether the sequencing and design of regulatory reform, rather than the ideological choice between regulation and deregulation, determines institutional durability and consumer-welfare outcomes. It employs a structured comparative-doctrinal method, analysing enabling legislation, regulatory mandates, appellate arrangements, judicial decisions, agency materials, and multilateral institutional assessments. The study compares India, the United States, the European Union, Japan, and Brazil between 1980 and 2025, with banking and telecommunications as its two principal sectors; energy and transportation are used only as contextual comparators. The article advances three propositions. First, reforms that establish operationally independent regulators with technical capacity and effective appellate oversight before competitive market opening are more likely to yield durable outcomes than reforms that liberalise first and regulate later. Second, regulatory capture is a systemic institutional risk requiring structural, rather than exclusively procedural, safeguards. Third, Indian regulatory law is broadly capable of supporting adaptive governance but retains identifiable gaps in accountability, independence, and anti-capture design. By disaggregating the regulation–deregulation binary into sequencing, agency independence, appellate architecture, stakeholder engagement, anti-capture safeguards, and adaptive capacity, the analysis identifies institutional combinations associated with resilient regulatory systems. The comparative findings support a reform agenda centred on pre-liberalisation institutional investment; transparent, independent data capacity; fixed and protected regulatory appointments; cooling-off restrictions; and stronger legal protection for the autonomy of systemically significant agencies. For India, the article recommends circumscribing executive direction powers and considering enhanced constitutional or other higher-order legal safeguards for key regulators. The analysis is deliberately doctrinal and institutional, not econometric: it does not claim to establish universal causal effects or measure sectoral outcomes exhaustively. Its conclusions are therefore limited to the five selected jurisdictions, the two primary sectors, and the 1980–2025 period. Within those limits, the article offers a transferable framework for evaluating regulatory reform.

REGULATORY SEQUENCING AND ADAPTIVE GOVERNANCE: A COMPARATIVE LEGAL STUDY OF BANKING AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS REFORM IN INDIA, THE UNITED STATES, THE EUROPEAN UNION, JAPAN, AND BRAZIL Read More »