Ease of Doing Business rankings: Andhra Pradesh tops list, Telangana a close second

Construction permits, labour regulations, environmental registrations, access to information, land availability, and single window system, were some of the parameters on which the states were evaluated.

Abhishek: First two years in 2015 and 2016, the department along with World Bank focused on getting the reforms done by the state governments - having regulations in place, having easier policies, processes and laws and so on but then we found that unless we check with the people on the ground whether the reforms are being felt by them, it doesn't make any sense because sometimes people said that the single window is not working so what is the point.

So, what we did is, we identified 78 out of 372 reforms last year and we thought that we will take public feedback. The sample was almost 9000 people, an independent agency was selected by the World Bank team in Delhi and we got the users of the reforms from all the states which numbered more than 50000.

So, out of this 50000 about 6000 users were randomly selected through using whatever programme they had and the agency sent out teams to other states to speak to them. So, most of the feedback has been taken face to face and very detailed survey has been done. Many states did not send any user data, so we could do it only in 23 states.

I think this feedback is making a big difference and the state governments agreed with us that feedback should be the criteria of evaluation. State government also were happy to agree with us that user feedback should be taken and they shared with us all this information and they did a tremendous outreach programme with the users in the state, they reached out to industry, they reached out to the business leaders to see if their reforms are working on the ground. So, this has been a great experience and we are thinking that from next year or in the next round of reforms we would like to get the entire evaluation done of the state reforms through feedback. This time it was about 20 percent, we would like to do 100 percent next time.

Abhishek: If you see the rankings that we have put out today, there are lot of states that get zero on feedback, so you can conclude from there as to which are the states that did not share any user data.

Abhishek: Yes. Wherever we got feedback or user data and the reforms were claimed by the states, we have taken their feedback. So, you can conclude that most of the others did not send any user data at all. If I may also clarify, many of these states actually did not even claim many of the reforms.

Abhishek: That was the purpose of the feedback, that whatever claims may be there of doing reforms, we have to check with people on the ground. So, that check has been done and it will be a kind of eye opener for those where the feedback score has been poor or low. I am sure they will do better to make users feel the reforms.

The same thing happened to us when World Bank Doing Business report was being done, in 2016 we started taking lot of feedback from the users of our reforms even for the World Bank report overall for the country and that was very helpful to us. Instead of trying to get feedback every June-July, we started getting feedback every week, every month and we started making our reforms and making improvements.

So, process of continuous feedback from the users is very important, that is the lesson and either you validate your reforms through that or you learn where you need to improve further and what are the gaps between your reforms and the implementation on the ground. So, this exercise is very helpful in identifying these gaps.

Abhishek: So far as the reforms implemented score is concerned since this is the third year of doing this reforms, the states have also learned, they have tried to improve their regulations, practices, online systems – on the reforms there has been huge improvement. We have done so much of capacity building, the stronger states have helped the weaker states, all that has happened that is why their reform claim has been pretty good and it has consistently improved in the last three years. But feedback is a different story.

Many states have done lot of work on reaching out to the beneficiaries or the users of the system, so they have done lot of work on that. So wherever they have reached out to the beneficiaries or the users and they have tried to see that reforms are felt on the ground, the results are also good.

I think it is a lesson that all of us whether Central government or State Governments, we should be continuously talking to the users, continuous feedback should be taken and corrective action should be taken on the feedback that we get. That is a lesson for everyone.

Abhishek: Since we have released the main data on reform evaluation, we will be sharing indicator wise data of the various feedback that we have taken and then we will know more granular details of the feedback and which area the feedback has been good and in which area it needs to improve. We will be sharing the data maybe tomorrow.

Abhishek: The message that we get from these rankings is that gap between the top states are very low, some time there is a gap of 2-3 percent and you have 10-12 states within that 2-3 percent. I will look at the tremendous efforts made by the states to improve their business environment. I think the effort has been tremendous in the last three years and that is the takeaway that we see.

On the feedback we all need to improve – as government authorities, as public authorities we all need to improve our feedback system. So this is lesson is there for everyone, not only states but even for central government. I will actually take the positives in this exercise that all people have made great effort, good reforms, learned from each other, consolidated their reforms and on feedback everyone needs to improve.

Abhishek: All the states will need to do that analysis whether it is a communication problem or the reforms have not actually felt on the ground and what can be the strategy of outreach, how do you improve the communication. Some states like Jharkhand made a presentation today in the event how they have reached out to stakeholders. I am sure many other states have also reached to stakeholders effectively.

So, I think this is a lesson, we would also like to work with the states help them find out whether communication needs to improve or whether reforms themselves needs to improve on the ground. We will all do that exercise together and will try to come up with solutions.

So for us it is basically a learning exercise, we have learned, states have learned that they need to improve their feedback and they need to work more with the stakeholders. I think that is the lesson and we all will benefit from that.

Abhishek: We have done lot of reforms this year on World Bank DB report as well. We have already submitted our claims. Their team has already come here and they have talked to the stakeholders but they take feedback on phone, on email, so that process is on. We will hear from them, their preliminary feedback maybe next month and results will be out in October. We have done lot of reforms and optimistic that we will make some improvement in our rank.