We Killed the License Raj - Did We Accidentally Create the Crony RajWelcome to the New Raj-Now with Better WiFi Let me be direct: We've been sold a spectacular lie, and we’re buying it wholesale.

In 1991, India threw open its economic windows. The License Raj was dead. Competition would reign. Consumers would be king. The Indian dream would finally materialize.

Thirty-four years later, here’s what I'm seeing: $150 billion in M&A deals last year. Market concentration up 20-30% across every critical sector. Telecom? Duopoly. Aviation? IndiGo controls 63%—and allegedly manipulates flight schedules to pressure the government. Ports? Adani owns 27% of India's cargo. Banking? The strong eat the weak, and we applaud it as "consolidation."

This isn’t a market. This is a carve-up. And we’re calling it progress.

The Bureaucrat Got a Promotion

Here's the uncomfortable truth: We didn't kill the tyrant. We just gave him a stock certificate and a corner office.

Under the License Raj, oppression was transparent. A bureaucrat with a red pen controlled your destiny. You knew who to blame.

Today? We've outsourced tyranny to the private sector. When a telecom company decides your internet speed with two choices, that's not competition—it's hostage-taking pretending to be a market. When an airline controls two-thirds of domestic flights and disrupts schedules to manipulate government policy, that’s not business—it’s extortion in a pressed suit.

And we call this freedom.

The License Raj was honest about its oppression. This new system hides behind quarterly earnings reports. It's tyranny with better PR. Same cage. Different decorator.

$150 Billion: Who Actually Won?

Post-merger companies see 15% higher returns on equity. Know what that means? They’re charging you more because they can. Not because they’re more efficient. Not because they deliver more value. But because competition—the only thing that keeps prices honest—is gone.

Studies show consolidated industries charge 15-20% more. Your phone bill went up. Your flight costs more. Your port fees increased. Not because of supply chain disruptions, but because someone decided you have nowhere else to go. We’ve built a machine that extracts wealth and calls it "the market."

The Startup Graveyard: Innovation as Collateral Damage

India adores its startup narrative: Garage entrepreneurs. Disruptors. The next Infosys.

But here's what’s actually happening: A startup in Hyderabad builds something genuinely innovative. Real traction. Promising metrics. Then acquisition offers flood in. The founder cashes out. The startup gets absorbed.

Then it vanishes.

Not because it failed. But because the acquiring company realized: This technology threatens our business model. Better to buy it and bury it.

Private equity poured $5.3 billion into deep-tech and AI startups last year. Ask yourself: How many will remain independent in five years? How many will be locked in corporate vaults, their potential wasted?

We've turned innovation into a financial asset class. Founders get rich. Venture capitalists celebrate. But India loses what it desperately needed: genuine competitors to challenge incumbents.

You can't have sustainable innovation when your best innovators are exit strategies for venture capital.

The CCI: Investigating While Rome Burns

The Competition Commission updated regulations in 2024. Lower deal thresholds. New scrutiny for killer acquisitions. A Phase II investigation—the first in six years.

Then reality hit.

Tata Steel-JSW? Approved. Adani’s expansion? Green-lit. Mega-deals sailing through like they’re pre-approved. And the CCI? Investigating. Always investigating. Never prosecuting.

It’s theater. Expensive bureaucratic theater.

The one exception? Apple. Fighting over penalty calculations. $38 billion exposure. Suddenly, the CCI has urgency. But for every Apple, 10 Indian mega-deals disappear into approval without a second thought. Why? Because aggressive enforcement scares away foreign investment. It’s easier to investigate and approve anyway.

That’s not regulation. That’s regulatory capture with a press release.

“National Champions”: The Last Lie

Every authoritarian regime justifies consolidation the same way: “We need scale to compete globally.”

New Delhi whispers about “National Champions”—Indian titans supposedly necessary to challenge Silicon Valley or Beijing.

It’s seductive. It’s also a lie we tell ourselves: We’re building a plutocracy and calling it competitiveness.

Parliament’s Standing Committee warned in August 2025: Duopolies are strangling critical sectors. Translation: We’ve surrendered essential infrastructure to private actors who answer to shareholders, not citizens.

When your telecom duopoly throttles competitors’ apps, what’s your recourse? When your port monopolist raises fees by 30%, where do you complain? When your aviation duopolist cancels flights to manipulate policy, what’s your legal remedy?

You have none. You’re a captive.

Kautilya warned 2,000 years ago: Kingdoms fall when merchants become more powerful than the state. We’re not building National Champions. We’re building corporate feudal lords.

The Billion-Person Problem

India needs to employ a billion people by 2047. That’s the real challenge of “Viksit Bharat.”

But where will these jobs come from? Not from consolidation. Consolidated industries shed jobs. Automation accelerates. Wages stagnate. Innovation slows.

Jobs come from creative destruction—new firms constantly disrupting old firms, creating new industries. But India is failing:

• Entry is harder because incumbents control distribution and capital.
• Competition is fake because startups get acquired before they scale.
• Innovation gets buried in corporate vaults.

The jobs won’t come. The billion people won’t be absorbed. We’ll look back at this decade as the moment we chose shareholder value over social stability.

Zoo or Jungle? We Chose the Zoo

Here’s where I’ll be brutally honest: We’re not building a developed nation. We’re building a sophisticated zoo.

A zoo is orderly. Safe. Predictable. But artificial. In a zoo, only the biggest animals get fed.

A jungle is chaotic. Dangerous. But vibrantly alive. In a jungle, if you fail to innovate, you don’t survive. Smaller predators challenge bigger ones. New species emerge constantly.

We had a choice. We chose the zoo.

Every CCI approval. Every merger. Every buried startup. Every regulatory signal that said: The strong will feast. The weak will adapt or disappear.

Viksit Bharat by 2047? We’ll get it. Skyscrapers will rise. GDP will grow. A dozen families will own everything. But the billion people? They’ll be managing the zoo.

The Bottom Line

We spent thirty-four years tearing down the License Raj. We celebrated the arrival of “free markets.” We believed competition would discipline power.

Instead, we've built something worse: A system where power consolidates silently through market mechanisms, hides behind quarterly earnings, and operates with implicit regulatory permission.

The License Raj was oppressive, but honest about it. This new system? Tyranny in a business suit. The carve-up of India’s economy, packaged as progress.

The worst part? We’re letting it happen because we’ve been taught to call it “the market.”