At the behest of the Government of India, the three national commodity exchanges, set up a little over three years ago, were required to organise futures trades in all commodities, whether of agricultural origin or not, through electronic online trading systems. The authorities did not stop at that. They even directed the old regional commodity exchanges, which had no other branches, to introduce the online trading system in place of the traditional ring-based open-outcry system, which was in vogue for almost a century.