Policy incoherence

Import management system for IT is licence raj by another name

The government has partially, but not wholly, retreated from its decision to impose a ban on the import of laptops and other pieces of information technology (IT) hardware without a specific licence. Instead, according to the Union minister in charge, an “import management system” will be introduced. The purpose, officials have said, is to reduce the degree of import dependence in the laptop supply chain and — to the extent that some imports are unavoidable — to import from a “trusted source”. There is some incoherence in the motivation here: Is it to incentivise the production of hardware and its