Letters: Bureaucracy and business

This refers to Rajiv Lall's article "The difficulty of making business easier to do" (June 26). It is almost difficult to believe that in 2014 India slipped to 134 out of 189 in the aggregate World Bank rankings. People are doing business in India because of a large consumer base, but a huge part of the revenue is being dragged out. But still, business is blooming in India. All the bottlenecks mentioned by the writer are real and happening all over the nation.

Unless the infrastructure for doing business is developed, it will be impossible to have rigid regulations and laws. It is true that the complex net of regulations and approvals are delaying the value-addition process and slowly making us non-competitive, compared to our neighbouring countries. We are unnecessarily stuck in trivial laws.

It will be difficult to change the "mindset" of bureaucrats. I am yet to interact with a bureaucrat who has a practical view and is offering instant solutions. The morale of an entrepreneur is demolished irreversibly.

We need to encourage more online approval and permission systems. Bureaucrats should be taken to task if they are unable to clear pending approvals within a fixed period of time.

Ashok Chakrabarty Kolkata

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