Talking Point: India’s Ease of Doing Business rank needs to rise

Basu, who demitted office as VP and Chief Economist at World Bank recently after a four-year tenure and has been the architect of the Doing Business report, said India already stands out with over 7 per cent growth rate in a difficult phase of global economy but needs to pay greater attention on inclusiveness. Pointing out that for a nation growing so well, India has far too many people below the poverty line, Basu said Indians must be proud of the country’s diversity in terms of religion, caste and race and rued that “some Indians are ashamed instead of being proud of these qualities.” 

Noting that India has a long history of caste and discrimination, Basu said the country’s founding fathers made a big effort to change this and make India into a secular society. “There has to be greater effort to build on this cohesiveness. India’s diversity of religion, caste and race is something we should be proud of. Also India stands out among emerging economies for being a nation where freedom of speech is valued. “These political and social characteristics are important for sustained economic growth. I believe that inclusiveness is a moral precept. You must work to promote inclusiveness for the sake of high long-run GDP growth,” he added. 

Advocating a push for inclusiveness, Basu said the government must invest more on health and education and design better delivery so that these benefits reach everybody. “In the long run, better nutrition, better education, better health can make a disproportionate difference to a nation’s development. But for that reason these interventions get too often overlooked.” He refused to comment on this year’s Doing Business report, saying the work on it was still going on, but hoped India would continue to improve its ranking. “We saw India greatly improve over the last two years, from rank 142 to 130. This was because of reforms and partly because of improved methodology,” he said.