This chapter on India suggests that the Indian Competition Act of 2002 already had the possibility to offer lenient treatment to a firm that reports the existence of a cartel. However, the details for offering lenient treatment were only elaborated for the first time in 2009, in the Lesser Penalty Regulation. A revision followed in 2017. This resulted in a mere thirteen decisions of the Competition Commission of India (CCI) supported by the leniency programme. This low number may be explained by the discretion the CCI has to judge leniency applications and the uncertainty leniency applicants face in relation to damages claims. The chapter recommends addressing these issues, but also increasing the incentives to apply for leniency by introducing individualised sanctions to directors or immunising successful leniency applicants from debarment from procurement projects. Another recommendation is to avoid creating other pitfalls when the Competition Act is being amended.

With the world population rapidly increasing, achieving food security has been a recurring global challenge. Consequently, dependence on agricultural inputs such as fertilisers has continued to grow. The dependency on inorganic fertilizers is especially acute for developing countries. Paradoxically, the major developing economies that need fertilizers to meet their ever-increasing food production requirements are not self-sufficient in the fertilizer sector. In this realm, Potash is a typical case in point. Production and supply of potash has historically been controlled by international export cartels that consist of a limited number of firms. Not very recently, one of the major export cartels underwent further concentration when the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan merged with Agrium Inc. to form the largest crop nutrient producer in the world - Nutrien. This Chapter discusses the merger and the resultant competition concerns from the perspective of two major import-dependent economies i.e. China and India. It also delineates some limitations of the merger reviews conducted by the respective competition authorities. The objective therein is to address the limitations of the standard ex-post competition analysis and to highlight the political economy issues that affect the state of competition and consumer welfare in markets that are subject to international cartels.