Fixing the Wiring
March’s writing covered three themes. The first was energy - the current unfolding crisis has exposed how badly the wiring needs fixing — price signals suppressed, subsidies misallocated, and a grid that cannot support the transition India needs. Two pieces explore this, on fuel prices and on the structural reforms India’s electricity sector needs to make.
Why shielding consumers from rising fuel prices can backfire
31 March 2026
When oil prices rise, the instinct is to shield consumers from price signals. But shielding consumers is not the same as protecting them — it is simply deferring the cost, distorting the market, and ultimately leaving them worse off. IOC, BPCL, and HPCL have already lost around ₹20,000 crore due to the price freeze, losses that will accumulate on balance sheets, raise borrowing costs, and circle back to the government as contingent liabilities.
Now is India’s chance to reform its electricity system — utilise the energy crisis
17 March 2026 · with Akshay Jaitly
India’s electricity sector is riddled with price distortions. Agriculture and domestic consumers are heavily subsidised, while commercial and industrial users pay inflated tariffs. Costs do not disappear because the government wills it — they get shifted, hidden, or deferred. The current energy crisis is an opportunity to fix five structural problems that have long been ignored.
The second theme was consumer protection in financial markets, where the wiring has been faulty for years — banks selling unsuitable products, regulators looking the other way. The RBI has finally moved to address mis-selling by banks — a long-overdue step — but draft rules are only the beginning. A separate piece looks at what the directions get right, and what still needs to happen for them to have real teeth. The piece also points out that the draft rules didn’t emerge from nowhere — they are the product of over a decade of work. Research quantified the scale of mis-selling, mystery shopping studies documented how it happened on the ground, and sustained advocacy built the case for reform. That evidence fed into the 2014 Sumit Bose Committee, which identified fragmented regulation, perverse commission structures, and opaque disclosures as the root causes. The draft directions are the policy output of a long and unglamorous process of data, advocacy, and government engagement.
Why RBI’s draft rules aren’t enough to curb mis-selling of financial products
3 March 2026
The RBI’s draft directions on responsible business conduct are a welcome step, long overdue. For the first time, mis-selling is treated as a governance failure — not merely an operational lapse by an overzealous relationship manager. But draft directions have to become final, enforcement has to be clarified, and then the rules have to actually get implemented. The process has only just begun.
The third theme was securities market regulation. The Securities Market Code Bill, 2025 is one of the most significant pieces of financial legislation India has seen in years. Along with a group of co-authors, I submitted detailed comments on the Bill .
Securities regulation
1 April 2026 · with Natasha Aggarwal, Pratik Datta, K.P. Krishnan, Bhavin Patel, M.S. Sahoo, Ajay Shah, and Bhargavi Zaveri-Shah
Our comments welcome the advances on governance and regulation-making, while flagging serious concerns about the concentration of power in SEBI and the absence of a clear separation between its investigative, legislative, and adjudicatory functions.