Unlearn single window, learn ecosystem approach: ‘Ease of doing Business’ sutra

THE CONTEXT OF a transformative design influences the change.If incremental improvement or rearranging with the existing system—calling it “reform’—doesn’t yield the desired result.

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This is one reason many reform initiatives have not yielded outcomes on the ground, despite the government’s good intent at the top.

The reform effort of the newly formed High-Level Committee on Regulatory Reforms can hopefully establish a broader context to thoughtfully redesign systems and create an institutional mechanism that prevents regulatory cholesterol from building up.

There is a further context to this unclogging. The main objective is to unleash the entrepreneurial imagination and energy of the nation. Whether Infosys or HDFC Bank or Nykaa’s democratisation of the right of women to look beautiful came first — or whether the regulations that enabled them came first — the unseen and unforeseen responses emerge from regulatory change.

It is a crying need, an emergency, for India to exhort and wake up the legatees of its glorious mercantile past. As Swami Vivekananda said — “Arise and awake and sleep not until the task is done!”. We need all of them to face the forces preventing our rise, rather than wanting to colonise us. Therefore, a more decisive approach to deregulation is essential; that is our entreat. The resolve of the deregulators must ensure that the world’s number 3 economy also becomes at least number 15 in terms of Ease of Doing Business (EODB).