India’s government set the goal to grow the country’s digital economy to $1 trillion by 2025–26. Dynamic growth of digitalmarkets is one of the government’s priorities for attaining this goal. Digital platforms are important drivers of growth. Simultaneously,big tech’s non-competitive practices create risks of economic and moral damage for consumers and distort competitionin the markets. India’s authorities shape regulation of the digital markets in two main directions: consumer protectionand prevention digital platform behaviours which might impair competition. To protect consumers, the government hasamended the consumer protection rules and expanded their application to digital enterprises. India adopted the ConsumerProtection Act (2019), the Consumer Protection in E-Commerce Rules (2020), and the Digital Personal Data ProtectionAct (2023). To ensure contestability, fairness, and transparency in digital markets, in 2023 the Competition (Amendment)Act was approved by Parliament, placing digital markets within the legal framework of competition. The Committee on theDigital Competition Law developed a draft Digital Competition Bill (2024) which aims to regulate systemically significantdigital enterprises through an ex ante approach.The article reviews the government of the Republic of India’s policy on digital platform regulation, exploring themain instruments and difficulties in shaping the new system and determining a regulatory approach. The study draws on asurvey of the regulatory bills and rules, reports, bill drafts, experts’ assessments, and research articles. The authors focuson the amendments to the consumer and competition protection laws adopted in recent years. The article concludes withthe authors’ views regarding the adoption of the Digital Competition Bill and perspectives on India’s interest in deepeninginternational cooperation on digital markets regulation, including in the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China, SouthAfrica, and others) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).

the article was written on the basis of the RANEPA state assignment research programme.

This article was submitted on 29.03.2024.