Last week, the papers were awash with the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business report. Although India’s rankings have improved, they are still low at the 100th position. I’m sure we can do better in letter and spirit. In letter, because the competitive education system that we have all gone through, encourages an ability to understand testing patterns and score well. In spirit, because the difficulty of doing business is holding us all back in a very substantial manner. So, I went through the detailed methodology of these rankings to determine the role insurance could have in improving our standing.
The entire study is available on www.doingbusiness.org. The research is meticulous and must take enormous effort to compile across 190 countries. There are 10 criteria, given equal weight. In six of these, there is a role for insurance, either in terms of improving India’s rankings or in coping with the issue that is pointed out.