The central government and media celebrated the recent news about India’s improvement in the World Bank’s “Ease of Doing Business” annual ranking from 130 to 100. The Bank’s “Doing Business” project was launched in 2002 as an attempt to “encourage economies to compete towards more efficient regulation” and offer “measurable benchmarks for reform”. He was quoted as saying, “Getting environmental clearances was a “nightmare” for companies”, and that ease of doing business would need to be introduced with “more sensibility”. In April 2015, at a national conference on ease of doing business, the Prime Minister introduced a system of standardised environmental assessments to grant approvals to projects within 30 days! Yet, the government has hit out at environmental regulations as the greatest bottleneck and eased the entry of large corporations into forest areas, coastal lands, riverbeds, and mountains.

Source: dna November 14, 2017 02:37 UTC