Doing Business

There is space for a more robust, inclusive index

The World Bank has probably made a sensible decision to discontinue its 17-year-old annual Ease of Doing Business (EODB) report, though it took revelations of “irregularities” in the 2018 and 2020 editions before it did so. It had not gone unnoticed in commentary as 2018 was the year India moved into the top 100 rankings for the first time and went up 14 places in 2020 to rank 63. A jubilant Modi government was aiming for a top 50 position in the next round of rankings. Though it is unclear how far the anomalies detected will alter India’s ranking —