Gyaan Sutra On entrepreneurship and technology

Ajay Shah has an interesting article about ‘Future trading is not evil’ in Business Standard.
He argues

In old India, a coherent trading community - often drawn from one jati - would dominate the business of one product. They would have a considerable influence on the price, an influence that veers on market manipulation. Nationwide electronic futures trading is a fundamentally new game, in that a whole new breed of players are competing in their business. The futures market tends to be quite liquid, and it is harder for the traditional traders to control the price.

(Link)

While some people in India are trying to have future trading banned, in a so called effort to curb inflation, in New York, the New York Board of Trade, a subsidiary of the InterContinental Exchange Inc., said on last Friday that its electronic soft commodity futures trading hit a new high of 94,539 contracts. There must be a reason why so many people are putting in money there.

Some might argue that this is different in the Indian context, and we as Indians stand to lose if future trading is not banned. But the thing is, I can be sure that if anything gets banned, or gets close to getting banned, it is almost always good for most of us Indians.