Elections, Capital Market regulation, Direct Benefit Transfer and Vaccination Drives – What India can teach the world

A few weeks ago, the United States witnessed the Gamestop episode that shook Wall Street. The Wall Street elites (money managers) were fooling the retail investors for decades and amid the pandemic, a group known as WallStreetBets came together to deploy the same methods against them. Many analysts gave different shades of opinion on the episode, depending on the camp they belonged to. But, the most important thing this episode did is that it exposed the vulnerability of the American capital markets.

At that time, Nitin Kamath, the founder of retail investment app Zerodha, tweeted a long thread on why something like this would never happen in India. “We have a habit of looking west and thinking what they do must be right. With all the craziness going on in the US capital markets, I thought it will be a good time to share some of the reasons why India is way better in terms of capital market regulations,” he tweeted.

The Indian capital market, regulated by the Securities and Exchange Board of India, is much better regulated compared to any other market in the world. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the oldest capital market regulator in the world, does a worse job in regulation compared to its Indian counterpart.

We have a habit of looking west and thinking what they do must be right. With all the craziness going on in the US capital markets, I thought it will be a good time to share some of the reasons why India is way better in terms of capital market regulations. 1/n

— Nithin Kamath (@Nithin0dha) January 29, 2021

Similarly, during the 2020 US Presidential Election, there were so many allegations – from both sides – of voter fraud and illegal voting. The United States faced this problem because despite being the oldest democracy in the world, the country still does not have a central voter list or a separate constitutional body to conduct free and fair elections like the Election Commission of India. In India, except for some allegations of EVM fraud from some parties, at least no serious question/debate/ discussion is over the impartiality of the election authority.

Moreover, in the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT), India has done it more efficiently compared to any country in the world, thanks to Jan Dhan-Aadhar-Mobile (JAM) trinity. People like Bill Gates, who have worked on public policy and welfare issues in countries around the world, called JAM the most sophisticated way of transferring money to citizens.

The latest among these is vaccination. Europe, a continent of the same size, diversity, and problems that of India – but comparatively very rich and robust public health infrastructure – is facing so many difficulties with vaccination drive. On the other hand, India is not vaccinating its population with indigenous as well as foreign vaccines at a fast pace but has supplied lakhs of the vaccine dose to countries around the world – rich and poor. So, as far as dealing with the Coronavirus pandemic is concerned – the Indian response was more mature compared to the European Union despite weak healthcare infrastructure.

There are many areas apart from the aforementioned ones in which India does much better compared to any other nation in the world and foreign countries are willing to learn from our experience of digital payments or DBT. However, a certain section of the Delhi commentariat with a colonized mindset still sees India as a third-world country that should meekly follow the rules instead of creating them, and that commentariat could be found opining in foreign left-liberal newspapers and media houses.