Who really runs India’s digital markets?

Technology promised fewer middlemen but created new ones shaping markets, power, and citizens’ lives, raising question of sovereignty

- SRINATH SRIDHARAN

DIGITAL SYSTEMS ARE increasingly treated as elegant answers to problems that once demanded institutional reform, political negotiation, and administrative judgement. In conferences, boardrooms, and policy discussions, technology increasingly carries the aura once reserved for institutions.

The optimism rests on a powerful assumption. Digital systems would remove the intermediaries who once controlled access to markets and opportunity. For years, economists criticised middlemen for distorting exchange. The digital economy promised disintermediation, where platforms would connect citizens directly with customers, lenders, employers, and audiences.

What has emerged instead is a different structure of power. Markets are not becoming free of intermediaries; they are becoming dependent on new ones.

In digital markets, algorithms increasingly determine who meets whom. They decide which products appear before consumers, which job applicants survive the first filter, which borrowers appear creditworthy, and which voices travel across networks. These systems analyse vast data, predict behaviour, and allocate visibility at a scale no human intermediary could match.