CIRC’s MAJOR ACHIEVEMENT IN 2013
2013 was one to remember as engaging, creative and inspiring for CIRC as team has given a fresh thrust to our continuing work on Competition Law and Economic Regulations. We are happy to share with you our major achievements that have made 2013 a success for us and inspired us to take a few bold steps into the future.
ACADEMIC OUTREACH
After rich international experience CIRC also held capacity building and training programmes for the national audience. With Summer and Winter Courses on ‘Competition law and Practice in India’ held for students; CIRC captured vast national audience who were offered strategically structured course for better understanding.
Forwarding with its capacity building initiatives, CIRC organised its first Faculty Development Programme. The participation response was overwhelming with faculties from leading law and business schools.
Moving a step further, the New Year would be marked by announcement of the first National Essay Writing Competition on competition law & policy and economic regulations, wherein cash awards and certificates of commendation would be given to the winners.
COURSES
The flagship course of CIRC in association with National Law University New Delhi (NLUD), Diploma and Certificate course in ‘Competition Policy & Law’ has been a popular course choice among the students. The first convocation for the said course was held on 21st December 2013 at NLUD Campus.
Another pioneering initiative of CIRC was to launch online courses on ‘Competition Act, 2002’ and ‘Law and Practice of PPPs in India’ for inter-disciplinary professionals and students. These courses have been uniquely structured and have duration of 08 weeks. These courses aim to strengthen executive education in the areas of Competition Policy and Law, Regulatory issues with facilitating classroom free, self-paced and interactive learning environment.
The coming year of 2014 will see launch of various other online courses including, Energy Law & Policy, Law & Economics of Land, Practice and Policy of Public Procurement and Economics for Competition Law & Policy, among others.
RESEARCH & PUBLICATIONS
The year 2013 was marked by two significant research projects that CIRC undertook. The first being, project entitled ‘Competition Reforms in Key Markets for Enhancing Social & Economic Welfare in Developing Countries’ (CREW). It is a multi-country project supported by DFID (United Kingdom) and BMZ (Germany) facilitated by GIZ (Germany) where CIRC is the implementation partner along with CUTS International for India.
And the second was a research project on ‘Data Privacy & Information Security for K12 students in India’with support from SafeGov Inc.
CIRC launched the second edition of Policy Souvenir, titled ‘The Interface between Business Strategy and Competition Law’ in the month of November. CIRC has also come out with working paper series and issue note series touching upon various competition and economic regulatory issues emerging from time to time. Two newsletters namely, CIRComp Weekly, a weekly e-newsletter on trans-boundary competition law updates, and PPP Bulletin, a bi-weekly e-newsletter on trans-boundary PPP and infrastructure news updates, is being circulated among the course participants and other industry professionals. Also a Case Bank has been prepared comprising of case studies to support both CA02 and PPP online courses.
CONFERENCES & EVENTS
A seminar was organised in Kuala Lumpur on Data Privacy & Information Security in the month of June last year by Cyber Security Malaysia in association with CIRC and Parent Action Group for Education Malaysia (PAGE). The seminar was attended by distinguished audience from MyCC, Student’s Rights Activist Group, and Malaysian Cyber Security Authorities among others. This was followed by two webinars held in the month of September and October respectively on ‘Interface between IP Laws and Competition Laws in India’.
CUTS International and CIRC pursuant to their agenda of deliberating and discussing key economic and governance challenges on competition and economic regulation at an international level, organised the 3rd Biennial International Conference on ‘Competition Reforms: Emerging Challenges in a Globalising World’, in the month of November 2013. The idea for this biennial series was conceived in the backdrop of developing countries concerns of frequent regulatory failures that undermine the capacity to achieve policies important to citizens and consumers and saw multi-country participation.