Published: July 15, 2026
CO 1 of 777
Three Days. Five Responses. Thousands of Characters. One Small
Observation.
Public consultations are among the most meaningful ways in
which citizens can contribute to better public policy.
Could enabling secure copy and paste together with commonly
used punctuation such as commas make
the consultation process more citizen-friendly while preserving appropriate
validation and security controls?
Sometimes, improving regulation begins by improving the conversation around regulation.
Author: Nayakanti Prashant
3rd Gen Banker & Citizen Lobbyist – Bengaluru
Advocating Digital Transactions Day (April 11)
Over the last three days, I participated in SEBI's public consultation on the proposed Common Advertisement Code.
The consultation itself was thoughtful.
It encouraged stakeholders to think deeply about investor
protection, virtual characters, digital communication and technology-enabled
supervision.
The portal experience, however, led me to one small citizen
observation.
Several commonly used punctuation marks, including the comma , could not be typed
directly into the comment fields.
Ironically, my grammar tool occasionally suggested corrections
and inserted a comma automatically.
I accepted those suggestions sparingly because I genuinely did
not know whether the final submission might later be rejected for containing a
character that contributors themselves were unable to type.
A comma is not
merely punctuation.
It separates ideas.
It improves readability.
It reduces ambiguity.
Most importantly, it helps the reader understand the
contributor's intent.
Public consultations invite citizens to spend hours
researching, refining and validating their recommendations.
The effort should ideally be invested in improving ideas
rather than manually reproducing them under avoidable interface constraints.
One small enhancement for future consultations could therefore
be to permit secure copy-and-paste functionality together with commonly used
punctuation marks such as comma s while
continuing to block characters that genuinely present security or validation
concerns.
In many cases, the manual transcription effort may exceed the
time spent developing the actual recommendations.
That is time that could otherwise be invested in producing
better public policy inputs.
As someone who advocates Digital Transactions Day on April 11,
I often say that Digital Payments are only a subset of Digital Transactions.
In the same spirit, a public consultation is more than a web
form.
It is a digital transaction between a citizen and a regulator.
The easier it is to contribute thoughtfully, the stronger that
transaction becomes.
Sometimes, the smallest improvements create the biggest
participation.
Disclaimer
This article reflects my personal experience while
participating in SEBI's public consultation process and is intended as a
constructive citizen observation. The views expressed are my own. Artificial
Intelligence was used as a research, drafting and language assistance tool. The
analysis, observations and responsibility for this article remain entirely
mine.
Every trusted digital transaction begins with a trusted
digital interaction.
All roads lead to April 11 – Digital Transactions Day.
Please note that Digital Payments
are a subset of Digital Transactions.
The Joy of Digital Transactions
Nayakanti Prashant
3rd Gen Banker & Citizen Lobbyist – Bengaluru
Advocating Digital Transactions Day (April 11)
Author’s Blogs
https://prashantrandomthoughts.blogspot.com
https://prashantnepayments.blogspot.com
https://innovationinbanking.blogspot.com
