Economic Liberty in Digital Market and Digital Competition Legislation: Indian Context

The rise of extraordinary digital platforms raised issues of monopolistic behaviours, market concentration, and digital ecosystem power balance, which complicated economic liberty protection in the digital age by compromising economic freedom, such as fair competition, innovation, and customer care. This paper focuses on the Digital Competition Bill from India 2024, a crucial piece of legislation that attempts to lure the digital market monopolies from threats and culminate in a model of economic liberty in a digital economy. The bill aims to regulate “gatekeeper” platforms, those huge digital companies that lead access to markets and services across the Internet, against a number of anti-competitive practices, including self-preferencing, exploitation of data, and restrictive business terms brought into the picture for the benefit of another party. Such an act of practice mostly cuts off the competition, disallows minimum market access for small entities, and hampers the overall consumer experience. The Digital Competition Bill, therefore, seeks to create a level regulatory field for large and small representatives in the marketplace so that innovation and abuse of access to digital opportunities are promoted. The paper will also examine in detail how this particular law on digital competition, the Digital Competition Bill, mentioned above, helps create a conducive digital market environment to realize economic liberty for companies, small and big. This study argues that a Digital Competition Bill can change the country’s approach to regulating digital market competition, provide an adequate framework for fostering economic liberty in digital markets.