Organised by CUTS institute for regulation & competition (CIRC)

Background
During past two decades, there has been a global surge in adoption of competition policy and economic regulation in developing economies. It is believed that effective competition and independent regulation together contribute to economic growth and welfare, while creating an environment that favours change, innovation and improvement.

While an effective competition policy allows entry of non-state players into traditional state-dominated arenas and thus promotes economic democracy, economic regulation by specialised independent agencies seeks to balance between various interests and stated objectives through rational decision making regarding access, allocation, licensing and pricing. Moreover, independent regulation is expected to create an enabling environment to facilitate healthy competition. That way both competition and regulation are complementary to each other.

With Competition Policy and Economic Regulation deeply in flux, research and debate are unusually active. There is a need to draw together the work from many directions, to try to apply analysis consistently in clarifying the industries, the regulatory processes, and their results. Considering the technocratic nature of these reforms and their origin in the developed world, there is a huge gap of knowledge and awareness. It necessitates enhancing knowledge and strengthening capacity of various stakeholders including policymakers, private sector players, civil society representatives, consumers and students.

By engaging students in an essay writing contest and thus raising their inquisitiveness, CIRC seeks to contribute in building future professional in these significant domains. Thus, with an attempt to explore and nourish the talents of the students as well to express their outlook on current national issues, CUTS Institute for Regulation & Competition (CIRC) organise National Level Essay Writing Contest every year. This year it was organised in association with Society of Indian Law Firms and Services Export Promotion Council as Principal Partners, Amity Law School as Institutional Partner, Lex Witness as Official Magazine Partner. We received a huge response with many high quality submissions on intriguing topics on:

A. Competition Policy & Law and

B. Economic Regulations in India.

Entries were invited from Post graduate and Research students from various recognised universities and institutes. It was interesting to read the enthralling essays by authors from all over the country.

The essay competition attracted an impressive number of entries with diverse array of essays exploring different themes. Entries were received from students of various Universities- National Law University – Gujrat, Jodhpur, Raipur, Lucknow, Patna, Nalsar. ILS Pune, Symbiosis Law School, Amity Rajasthan, SNDT Mumbai and other renowned institutions.

Overall, 30 entries had been received from all over India, and were evaluated through expert scrutiny. Under Category A (Competition Policy & Law), Mr. Geet Sawhney GLC Bombay bagged the first position whereas under Category B (Economic Regulation), Ms. Mavis Marcus Cardoz and Ms. Himani Singh from NLU Kanpur shared first prize.

The topics this year were quite challenging but the standard was extremely high and the vast majority of essays were impressive pieces of work. This made it a very pleasant task to read through the essays but a very difficult task to judge the competition.

It was noted that almost all entrants observed the need for referencing and acknowledging the ideas of others. The strongest entries showed evidence of wide reading of secondary material as well as good deployment of original sources in order to back up their arguments. However, few entries were observed to be borrowing heavily from the internet sources, which we considered while shortlisting the essays.

Prize Winners:

Category A: Competition Policy and Law

	First Prize	Second Prize	Third Prize
Title of the Essay	Five Years of Competition Law in India	Strategies to Combat Cartel Behaviour	Cartels in Competition: A Need for CatharsisDevising Effective Strategies to combat Cartel Behaviour
Winner(s)	Mr. Geet Sawhney Government Law College, Mumbai	Ms. KritikaSethi Nalsar University of Law, Hyderabad	Ms. Aastha Tiwari & Mr. SidharthTewari Symbiosis Law School, Pune

Category B: Economic Regulation

	First Prize	Second Prize	Third Prize
Title of the Essay	Public Private Partnerships in Indian Railways: An Attempt to Rewrite the Rules	Public Private Partnerships: Need Challenges and Potential Solutions	No Suitable Entry
Winner(s)	Ms. Mavis Cardoz & Ms. Himani Singh Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia National Law University, Lucknow	Ms. Prapti Patel Indian Law Society’s College, Pune	No Suitable Entry

Award Distribution Ceremony
To honour the achievement of winners, CIRC organised an Award Distribution Ceremony on June 26th, 2015 at India International Centre, Lodhi road, New Delhi. In order to appreciate the efforts and dedication of young and vibrant participants, the panel of some esteemed people including: Mr. Ashish Chandra (General Counsel, Snapdeal), Mr. Gautam Shahi (Senior Associate, J. Sagar Associates), Mr. Pradip Kathuria (MD Track Manufacturing Co. Pvt. Ltd.) and Dr S Shantha Kumar (Dean, Faculty of Law, SGT University) were present during the ceremony.

The ceremony preluded with a brief overview of the CIRC National Essay Writing Competition 2015 by Dr. Ashwini Swain. He gave a warm welcoming speech signifying the need and increasing importance of Competition Law and Economic Regulation in India.

The dignitaries one by one shared their thoughts on the subject with the participants. Some of them expressed pleasure and excitement for being among the youth, while the other said that the students are the real asset of the nation, therefore, they must utilise their maximum strength by actively participating in these writing competitions to enhance and share their knowledge. After which, they distributed awards and certificates among the winners and congratulated them for their success.

The ceremony concluded by Vote of Thanks by Mr. Arun Talwar, Chief Operating Officer, CIRC, who requested the participants to continue on working on the lines of their interests by actively participating in various competitions organised in future, he thanked all the esteemed dignitaries and participants, team of CIRC and other associated partners for organising these kinds of competitions to boost the morale of young and vibrant students.

This was for the second time CUTS Institute for Regulation & Competition (CIRC) organised a National Level Essay Competition, and with kind support of its associate partners and active participation of students from various universities, the organisation was successful in achieving its aim of wider participation and strengthening capacities regarding competition and regulatory issues at various levels. This being an annual event, we will be holding it in coming years as well. We hope that the entrants enjoyed researching, reading for and writing their essays as much as we enjoyed reading them.

ÁNNEXURE I

About CUTS Institute for Regulation & Competition (CIRC)
CUTS Institute for Regulation & Competition (CIRC) was established in 2008 by Consumer Unity & Trust Society (CUTS International). CUTS was established in 1983 and has been a leading NGO in the world working on competition law and policy issues (www.cuts-international.org). With this legacy, CIRC is an initiative towards creating an intellectual and knowledge base on competition policy and law and issues relating to infrastructure regulation such as public-private partnerships, regulatory impact assessment. It is governed by a 17 member Governing Council, presided over by Mr Nitin Desai, former Under Secretary General of the UN. Its founder President was Dr. C. Rangarajan, Chairman Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India, who is now President Emeritus. The Council includes several eminent persons from among economists, judges and government officials. CIRC and CUTS have conducted many programmes on Competition Policy and Law in India and abroad. (For further details, please visit www.circ.in)

CUTS Institute for Regulation & Competition
D97, Ground Floor, Amar Colony, Lajpat Nagar IV, New Delhi 110024

About Amity Law School
The Law School has the unique distinction of being the first Law School in Delhi to start a 5-year integrated LL.B (H) programme. The School was established under the Ritnand Balved Education Foundation (RBEF) to achieve world-class legal education in the country. Dr. Ashok K. Chauhan, the Founder President of the Law School is a great philanthropist and a man of extraordinary vision. This vision of his has been translated into practical reality through the establishment of various educational institutions he has set up including the Amity Law School. His vision for the Law School is to provide excellence in legal education and to produce quality lawyers with good moral principles and great human values. The School has been granted affiliation by the Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Delhi for running a 5-year Integrated LL.B(H) programme and the affiliation has been approved by the Bar Council of India.

Amity Law School
F-1 Block, Sector 125, Amity University Campus, NOIDA – 201303

About Society of Indian Law Firms (SILF)
SILF is the apex body of law firms in India. SILF was established in the year 2000 with the aim of protecting, safeguarding and promoting the interests of law firms in India. The Bar Associations of the different courts in India represent the individual members of the legal profession in India. Law firms have not been historically represented in an organized and streamlined manner. A dire need was felt to form an association of this kind in view of various aspects of the practice of law that are peculiar to law firms in contradistinction to the role of individual practicing lawyers. The members of SILF include the top most law firms in India. SILF strives to create an atmosphere that has enabled Indian law firms to match the technology, manpower skill and the infrastructure that most of the foreign law firms possess. SILF serves as a forum for exchange of ideas and information as also a medium for interaction with the government, the judiciary and the bureaucracy. SILF has achieved many laurels amongst them being internationally recognized by IBA (International Bar Association), the UIA (Union International des Avocats) as well as by LAWASIA.

About Services Export Promotion Council (SEPC)
SEPC, an Export Promotion Council set by this Department, is an apex trade body to facilitate service exporters of India and serving as a platform of interaction between service exporters and policy makers. SEPC has been instrumental in promoting the efforts of Indian service exporting community. The Council has Completed 6 years of its existence and got a strong membership base of more than 1800 members from its 14 service sectors which come under the purview of SEPC and almost 250 members have registered themselves in the council during the financial year 2012-13. The management of SEPC vests with the Central Governing Council elected by members. Eminent personalities i.e. Shri Lalit Bhasin, renowned Advocate, is the Chairman, Dr. Naresh Trehan, renowned Cardiologist, is the Vice-Chairman of the Council and Ms. Amrit Raj, Director, Department of Commerce, is the Director General.

Annexure II

There were approximately 30 participants representing following colleges and universities:

NLU Jodhpur
Symbiosis Pune
NLU Gujrat
KIIT Odisha
NLU Raipur
Rajiv Gandhi, Patiala
Nalsar university of Law, Hyderabad
S.S. Maniyar College, Jalagaon
NLU Gujarat
SLS Pune
NLU Kanpur
ILS Pune
Amity Rajasthan
Bhadrak law college
NLU Cochin
NLU Patna
NLU Ranchi
GLC Mumbai
SNDT Mumbai
NLU Luckhnow
MDU Rohtak