Our desi "ease of doing business" ranking

Yesterday, the Govt of India released its own “Ease of doing Business”. Our desi version is known as “Assessment of State Implementation of Business Reforms” and not surprisingly enough, Gujarat was ranked as number one. This was followed by Andhra Pradesh. What came as a complete surprise was that at number three stood Jharkhand followed by Chhattisgarh in fourth place and Madhya Pradesh at number five. To paint this into a political picture, out of these five, four are under the BJP and one by TDP in Andhra, an ally of BJP anyway.

How did they arrive at these rankings? These rankings were based on States’ performance in the identified areas only over six months and this is the first year. From next year onwards, the rankings would take into consideration the full year. The assessment was based on reforms implemented by States in the period January 1 to June 30, 2015, based on the 98-point action plan for business reforms agreed between the DIPP and States last December.

The exercise is part of the Centre’s efforts to improve the country’s ranking in the World Bank’s ‘Ease of Doing Business’ report, where it was placed a poor 142 among 189 countries in 2015. One cannot help but take these rankings with a pinch of salt and frankly, six months is not a good enough time. And to top it all off, if this was about improving what the World Bank’s report said, surely they could have given us the areas/categories which were considered for arriving at this rankings. And shocker of all – Maharashtra does not figure out amongst the top five..