SPECULATION OVER INDIA’S RISE IN DOING BIZ RANKING

The World Bank’s decision to retrospectively correct the data of countries that were most affected by the irregularities gave rise to speculation over India’s ranking in the Ease of Doing Business rankings in 2018 and 2019. India had improved its rankings significantly in these two years. The country bettered its ranking by 30 places to come to the 100th spot in 2018 compared to 130 in the previous year.

The World Bank’s decision to retrospectively correct the data of countries that were most affected by the alleged irregularities gave rise to speculation over India’s spot in the Ease of Doing Business rankings for 2018 and 2020.

India had bettered its ranking by 30 places to reach the 100th spot in the 2018 report, against 130 in the previous year. Similarly, it ranked 63 in 2020, against 77 in the previous year, among 190 nations. The Narendra Modi government has aspired to put India in the top 5 position — a task yet to be achieved.

Many experts said India’s data filings have been transparent and are based on genuine reforms on the ground. Playing down the speculation, NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant told PTI: "India's business climate has been continuously improving, not for the World Bank's Index sake but to make India easy and simple."

Earlier, Kaushik Basu, who was the chief economist of the Bank during 2012 to 2016, had said India benefited from methodological changes. Bur, his statement related to the earlier reports. “For example, when India moved from 142nd to the 130th place between 2014 and 2015, the DB (Doing Business) team and I computed that only four of the 12 positions that India had climbed reflected changes India had made, with the remainder attributable to changes in the DB methodology," Basu stated in an article published on Project Syndicate in February 2018.

Congress leader Jairam Ramesh tweeted the Centre has been wasting its energy on drumbeating India’s improvement in World Bank indices.