Increasingly, the all-pervasive use of social media in India calls for its regulation. Not only there exists no law to address queerphobic content over social media, but also the only possible regulation through social media content review committees has often been problematic. Any attempt at legislation has not been successful and hence the need for a new suitable framework.
The shifting discourses on the purposes, objectives, and forms of India’s environment regulations are discussed within the broader domestic, political, and economic contexts. The environmental law reforms are being designed to legalise and protect financial investments in projects, irrespective of their environmental performance, and to monetise their impacts and damages.
With rapid industrialisation and urbanisation, the problem of water pollution in India has escalated dramatically over the last few decades. The regulatory apparatus, has, however, lagged behind. Major gaps in standard setting, including lack of standards for ambient water quality, poor monitoring and weak enforcement by the pollution control boards are the major proximate causes. Controlling water pollution will require a concerted effort to address these regulatory failures.
The discourse around air quality has grown substantially since 2015 with renewed engagement from the judiciary, new-found political salience, and executive initiatives. As we move from diagnosing the extent and causes of the crisis to finding appropriate responses, air quality governance will need to expand beyond the traditional policy instruments and agencies to become “regulation-plus.” This also requires government agencies to draw upon expertise beyond the atmospheric science and environmental engineering.
A set of draft rules released by the Cyberspace Administration of China, to regulate algorithm-empowered recommendation activities on the internet, are congruent with the demands made by civil societies worldwide and more substantive than the actions proposed or taken by the governments in western liberal democracies.
Research has been undertaken into the value relevance of accounting information and earnings management on stock valuation and into the moderating effects of corporate governance, but little research has been conducted into their nexus. A comprehensive examination provides empirical evidence that earnings management affects the value relevance of accounting information and that good governance can reduce the practice among Indian firms. An improvement in accounting standards may raise the confidence of potential investors in Indian firms, and policymakers and regulators may promulgate standards of codes and guidelines to improve the governance practices of Indian firms.
Recently, the Reserve Bank of India has begun licensing a new kind of retail bank, called payments banks, for the hitherto financially excluded. The regulator’s argument that technological innovation will allow payments banks to achieve a seemingly impossible trilemma of financial inclusion while still being competitive and profitable is examined. The article concludes that amelioration of this trilemma will require the regulatory orientation to fundamentally change, and for the state to provide a kind of public good to all payments banks.
The flip side of the ongoing and proposed infrastructure projects in Mumbai is explored. The concept of sustainable development is juxtaposed with the ramifications these projects have on the environment, and some important ecological questions are raised.
