Reform in Practice: Reflections by Ankita Dinkar (Mercatus Center)

Why is it still so hard to start and run a business in India? Why can't the farmers sell their land or put it to a different use? Why do our firms still stay small when they should be hiring and scaling? There's a common thread to these questions. Behind each of these limitations is either a rule, a law or a system that still holds people back. 

In 1991, India opened up its economy and unshackled its industry. It transformed the country. At the 1991 project, we have been asking, what will it take to finish the job? What will it take to unleash more economic freedom for Indians? I am Ankita Dinkar, the programme manager for the 1991 fellowship. 

Last year, in December, during our Ideas of India conference, we spoke to the participants. The participants included policy makers, scholars and entrepreneurs from our community. The agenda of the conference was deregulation. However, the conversations went further. We also discussed how to operationalise reforms and how to overcome institutional constraints. In this series, Reform in Practise, we have captured some of these conversations for you. Let me give you a quick snapshot of the series.

10 out of 27 speakers spoke about fixing land and labour regulations. This shows us that despite the recent reforms, we still have a long way to go. Alok Prasanna Kumar argued that before we start thinking about deregulation, we need to start with decriminalisation of our laws. Manjushree took us back to the drawing board. She believes that between policy design and legal drafting, there's a pipeline with a lot of leakages and she suggested how to fix some of these. Karan Nagpal asked a fundamental question. Does the Indian state have the capacity to identify the barriers correctly and then to successfully carry a deregulation exercise? 

Credits to our wonderful collaborators across the Indian policy community for making the series more diverse and richer. We are very grateful for your participation. We have 27 videos, a few minutes each.

You may agree with some and you may disagree with some. But I request you to engage with these ideas. Join the conversation about deregulating land, labour and enterprise and improving economic freedom for all Indians.

Thank you so much. You can find all these videos on our website: https://the1991project.com/conversations/reform-in-practice