Simplification of laws and procedures
The maze of laws, organizations, and practices that confront the ordinary citizen in his or her dealings with government encourage corruption and harassment. De-regulation has made almost no impact at the state level. The systems of buying and selling land, getting a ration card or your security back, and Rent Control Acts, all need a thorough revision. One can set up an industry worth billions of Rupees in India without any license today, but a farmer can neither set up a brick kiln unit, nor a rice shelling plant, and not even cut a tree standing on his own private field without bribing several officials. A simple operation of converting prosopis (a shrub occurring everywhere in states like Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, the more you cut it the more it grows) into charcoal, which can give employment to thousands of people requires four different permissions! Almost all occupations in the urban informal sector, such as hawking, small manufacturing in residential areas are illegal. Women were prosecuted in Orissa in 1995 for keeping brooms in their homes!
Therefore, in addition to delineating the functions of politics and administration, it is important to do away with unnecessary controls, reduce the powers of government, as well as reduce their discretion and increase transparency at every level. It is a sad commentary on our laws that the informal sector which provides maximum employment is mostly declared as illegal and subject to the whims of law enforcing agencies. A Committee should be set up to identify specific laws and rules which hamper entrepreneurship. A systematic review needs to be undertaken to review the areas in which government must withdraw, albeit in a phased manner, and departments which need to be wound up should be defined. On the whole, one should aim at reducing face-to-face citizens' contact with government, and rely more on internet-based services.
By Naresh Saxena, Senior Advisor (Governance), UNDP India
Member, National Advisory Council (NAC)