committee under the chairmanship of Mr. Damodaran, former Chairman of SEBI, to
recommend reforms to enhance the regulatory environment for doing business in
India. This was in response to the annual Doing Business rankings put out by
the World Bank, where India has not been performing satisfactorily with little improvement
or the last few years.
The committee has now
issued its report,
which is useful as it identifies the various shortcomings from the perspective
of foreign investors doing business in India. It also makes several
recommendations regarding legal reforms as well as on the regulatory
architecture. While the reforms suggested are overdue, it is not clear as to
how they can be implemented given that they relate to different government
departments, and on certain issues even at the state levels, and it would be a
mammoth task to implement them even if they are accepted formally by the
Government. Nevertheless, the recommendations provide a useful starting point even
if some of the government bodies were to begin implementing the recommendations
that will send strong signal positive signal for others to follow.
