Gujarat No 1 in ease of doing business? Thank environmental compliance: Centre-sponsored World Bank report

World Bank-supported chart

By A Representative
A Government of India report, supported by World Bank, consultants KPMG, and two top industry bodies, Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) and Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), has placed Gujarat No 1 for “ease of doing business”, but point out, this has been possible because of cent per cent compliance to environmental laws, an area in which it is most suspected by environmentalists.
The report’s revelation comes amidst sharp criticism by top environmental experts of the Gujarat government’s “complete failure” to ensure that industries comply with environmental norms. Only two years ago, the Central Pollution Control Board had found two of the industrial centres in Gujarat, Vapi and Ankaleshwar, as topping the list of most polluting clusters.
Setting aside these concerns, the report, interestingly, is more points to how quickly environment procedures are followed in Gujarat. It says Gujarat is the only state which has implemented the online “consent management system”, achieving 100 per cent score on this score. The compliance in Gujarat, it adds, is very high for handling air, water and hazardous waste pollution.

The report, in fact, praises the Gujarat Pollution Control Board for adopting “a web based application called eXtended Green Node (XGN) to provide an IT solution for effective implementation of various pollution control board clearances/procedures”.
It says, “XGN provides hassle free, 24 X 7 anywhere e-access to businesses to apply online, track application approvals, file returns and statements and getting online permissions under various Acts and rules. obtain the online permissions from GPCB.”
The other two parameters for which Gujarat has been found to be particularly doing well are land allocation and implementation of labour laws. Titled “Assessment of State Implementation of Business Reforms”, the report is the outcome of Prime Minister Narendra Modi asking the World Bank Group to “support” India’s efforts to enhance India’s competitiveness and increase manufactured exports.

A World Bank source says, the report “captures the findings of an assessment of reform implementation by states led by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India”.
It comes close on the heels of World Bank ranking Gujarat 142 among 189 countries in its assessment of ease of doing business. The ranking has gone down by two in a year; it was 140 in 2014. Onno Ruhl, World Bank country director, who released the report, says, “The stark reality is that India remains a difficult place to do business. A disproportionately high regulatory burden is borne by businesses in India today.”
Despite ranking No 1, the report does not believe that Gujarat is a leader. It says, “States with an overall implementation status of 75 per cent and above” would be leaders, but at 71.14 per cent Gujarat is still a little away.

Gujarat is still an “aspiring leader”, the report states, pointing out that it in the company of six other states – Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Rajasthan.
Notwithstanding Gujarat being No 1 in ease of doing business, as for “setting up business”, the report finds several states topping the list, but not Gujarat. Setting up business criteria include establishing an effective single window system, availability of information on regulatory compliance requirements, and similar such procedures.
The report comments, “Remarkably, Punjab is the only state in which the single window system allows application for all of the licenses studied in this assessment, although some others come very close. The box below examines how Punjab has achieved this.”
Other states which have “converted” their single window system into truly effective online portals” are Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh, the report points out.

Comments

Urgent need to study cause of large number of natural deaths in Gulf countries

By Venkatesh Nayak* According to data tabled in Parliament in April 2018, there are 87.76 lakh (8.77 million) Indians in six Gulf countries, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While replying to an Unstarred Question (#6091) raised in the Lok Sabha, the Union Minister of State for External Affairs said, during the first half of this financial year alone (between April-September 2018), blue-collared Indian workers in these countries had remitted USD 33.47 Billion back home. Not much is known about the human cost of such earnings which swell up the country’s forex reserves quietly. My recent RTI intervention and research of proceedings in Parliament has revealed that between 2012 and mid-2018 more than 24,570 Indian Workers died in these Gulf countries. This works out to an average of more than 10 deaths per day. For every US$ 1 Billion they remitted to India during the same period there were at least 117 deaths of Indian Workers in Gulf ...

A comrade in culture and controversy: Yao Wenyuan’s revolutionary legacy

By Harsh Thakor* This year marks two important anniversaries in Chinese revolutionary history—the 20th death anniversary of Yao Wenyuan, and the 50th anniversary of his seminal essay "On the Social Basis of the Lin Biao Anti-Party Clique". These milestones invite reflection on the man whose pen ignited the first sparks of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and whose sharp ideological interventions left an indelible imprint on the political and cultural landscape of socialist China.

India's health workers have no legal right for their protection, regrets NGO network

Counterview Desk In a letter to Union labour and employment minister Santosh Gangwar, the civil rights group Occupational and Environmental Health Network of India (OEHNI), writing against the backdrop of strike by Bhabha hospital heath care workers, has insisted that they should be given “clear legal right for their protection”.

Uttarakhand tunnel disaster: 'Question mark' on rescue plan, appraisal, construction

By Bhim Singh Rawat* As many as 40 workers were trapped inside Barkot-Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi after a portion of the 4.5 km long, supposedly completed portion of the tunnel, collapsed early morning on Sunday, Nov 12, 2023. The incident has once again raised several questions over negligence in planning, appraisal and construction, absence of emergency rescue plan, violations of labour laws and environmental norms resulting in this avoidable accident.

History, culture and literature of Fatehpur, UP, from where Maulana Hasrat Mohani hailed

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* Maulana Hasrat Mohani was a member of the Constituent Assembly and an extremely important leader of our freedom movement. Born in Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh, Hasrat Mohani's relationship with nearby district of Fatehpur is interesting and not explored much by biographers and historians. Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri has written a book on Maulana Hasrat Mohani and Fatehpur. The book is in Urdu. He has just come out with another important book, 'Hindi kee Pratham Rachna: Chandayan' authored by Mulla Daud Dalmai.' During my recent visit to Fatehpur town, I had an opportunity to meet Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri and recorded a conversation with him on issues of history, culture and literature of Fatehpur. Sharing this conversation here with you. Kindly click this link. --- *Human rights defender. Facebook https://www.facebook.com/vbrawat , X @freetohumanity, Skype @vbrawat

Job opportunities decreasing, wages remain low: Delhi construction workers' plight

By Bharat Dogra* It was about 32 years back that a hut colony in posh Prashant Vihar area of Delhi was demolished. It was after a great struggle that the people evicted from here could get alternative plots that were not too far away from their earlier colony. Nirmana, an organization of construction workers, played an important role in helping the evicted people to get this alternative land. At that time it was a big relief to get this alternative land, even though the plots given to them were very small ones of 10X8 feet size. The people worked hard to construct new houses, often constructing two floors so that the family could be accommodated in the small plots. However a recent visit revealed that people are rather disheartened now by a number of adverse factors. They have not been given the proper allotment papers yet. There is still no sewer system here. They have to use public toilets constructed some distance away which can sometimes be quite messy. There is still no...

Women's rights leaders told to negotiate with Muslimness, as India's donor agencies shun the word Muslim

By A Representative Former vice-president Hamid Ansari has sharply criticized donor agencies engaged in nongovernmental development work, saying that they seek to "help out" marginalizes communities with their funds, but shy away from naming Muslims as the target group, something, he insisted, needs to change. Speaking at a book release function in Delhi, he said, since large sections of Muslims are poor, they need political as also social outreach.

Warning bells for India: Tribal exploitation by powerful corporate interests may turn into international issue

By Ashok Shrimali* Warning bells are ringing for India. Even as news drops in from Odisha that Adivasi villages, one after another, are rejecting the top UK-based MNC Vedanta's plea for mining, a recent move by two senior scholars Felix Padel and Samarendra Das suggests the way tribals are being exploited in India by powerful international and national business interests may become an international issue. In fact, one has only to count days when things may be taken up at the United Nations level, with India being pushed to the corner. Padel, it may be recalled, is a major British authority on indigenous peoples across the world, with several scholarly books to his credit.

Gujarat Bitcoin scam worth Rs 5,000 crore "linked" with BJP leaders: Need for Supreme Court monitored probe

By Shaktisinh Gohil* BJP hit a jackpot in the form of demonetisation, which it used as an alibi to convert black money into white in Gujarat. Even as party scrambles for answers of how the Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank (ADCB), whose director is BJP president Amit Shah, received old currency worth Rs 745.58 crore in just five days, and how Rs 3118.51 crore was deposited in 11 district cooperative banks linked with Gujarat BJP leaders, a new mega Bitcoin scam, worth more than Rs 5,000 crore has been unraveled.

Counterview

Search This Blog