 "A lone employee works at the Sahasra Electronics main production facility, inside Noida SEZ. Photo: Dalip Kumar")
If India only reforms when under pressure, then now should be a moment for big changes: Gross domestic product contracted nearly 24% in the second quarter, more than any other large economy; tens of millions have lost jobs in the formal and informal sectors; and the country is adding over 85,000 confirmed coronavirus cases each day. There’s an obvious place for the government to start, too: fixing India’s failed special economic zones.
China, of course, pioneered the idea of testing politically difficult economic and legal reforms in a few such areas before rolling them out more widely. The experiment proved wildly
