It is time to follow Sebi’s lead on online dispute resolution

livemint.com:

Over the past decade-and-a-half, I’ve had the good fortune of having witnessed India’s rapid digitization from the sidelines. As exciting as it has been to see this transformation from up close, I’ve felt a mild sense of unease about what will happen if things go wrong. Given how frustratingly analogue our dispute resolution process is, it will matter little that we have streamlined our commercial interactions if we still settle disagreements the old-fashioned way.

The pandemic showed us that courts can function without parties being physically proximate. We need to use these learnings to rebuild our dispute resolution processes and make them better suited to the digital age—so that litigants and resolution professionals can function without always having to meet face-to-face. As much as we’ve been led to believe that the drama of arguing issues in open court is essential to meet the ends of justice, it is extremely difficult to assemble very busy people in the same place at the same time.

We can leverage digital technologies to solve this problem. Which is why I have, for some time now, been promoting the idea of online dispute resolution (ODR). Unfortunately, despite the valiant efforts of a burgeoning ODR community, its uptake has been slow.

Which is why I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has not only embraced ODR, it has taken significant steps to ensure it is actively used for disputes in the securities market. Under newly issued regulations, investors and listed companies are encouraged to leverage online conciliation and/or arbitration measures for disputes related to their activities in the securities market. To this end, Sebi requires market infrastructure