India's economic freedom plunge

India holding its position as Heritage Foundation but its economic freedom is moving in reverse gear

For a government so devoted to rankings and ratings, India dropping 20 places to 143 in the 2017 Index of Economic Freedom must have been a bummer. If Prime Minister Narendra Modi felt it worthwhile to approvingly cite India’s 19-place improvement in the World Bank’s Logistics Performance Index, surely such a dramatic fall in economic freedom should send alarm bells ringing?

Compiled by the conservative Washington DC-based Heritage Foundation, the Index of Economic Freedom has an unambiguous free-market tilt. It ranks countries based on 12 factors:

And on the face of it, India seems to have taken quite