Cutting Red Tape

The stranglehold of mindless regulations on the economy is hard to miss; cutting red tape will free citizens from hours of drudgery, and quicken economic growth. But regulations have to be toned down in the correct measure so that desired changes do happen, but at the same time, a chaotic situation is avoided. The Trumpian method of doing away with essential functions of government, without providing alternatives, may result in a governance vacuum

- DEVENDRA SAKSENA The writer is a retired Principal Chief Commissioner of Income-Tax

Transformative technological innovations of the twenty-first century have changed the way business is done the world over. Thousands of pages of documents and billions of dollars can move from one end of the globe to the other in nanoseconds, and a patient in Dubai can consult a specialist in New Delhi, as if both were sitting across a consulting table. However, government processes have not kept pace; your friendly tax inspector may still require you to file physical forms in triplicate.

The slow pace of government decision-making, and the effort required to comply with government regulations, is not exclusive to India; countries as disparate as the US, Argentina, Belgium, Vietnam, France and Great Britain are bigger victims of red-tape.

According to the Economist: "Americans spend a total of 12 billion hours a year complying with federal rules, including those on marketing and selling honey, and following standards on the flammability of children's pyjamas. The federal code runs to 180,000 pages, up from 20,000 in the 1960s. In the past five years the European Parliament has enacted more than twice as many laws as America. Businesses are required to make painstaking sustainability disclosures, filling in more than a thousand fields on an online form – an undertaking that is estimated to cost a typical firm in Denmark €300,000 ($310,000) every year. In Britain, well-meaning rules protecting bats, newts and rare fungi combine to obstruct, delay and raise the cost of new infrastructure."

Red tape is so detested by citizens that Javier Milei won the election for the Argentinian Presidency by campaigning with a chainsaw, which he promised to wield to cut Argentina's red tape. Then, cutting red tape was one of the promises that Donald Trump made, to get elected to the US Presidency.