Filter Out Bad Regulations to Reduce the Unease of Living

Context: The prevalence of bad regulation has limited India’s growth potential and need to be filtered out in order to ensure ease of living to the citizens.

Rising Significance of Ease of Living

• Push due to the pandemic: Many rich and poor countries, including India, are realizing that ease of living should be a duty-bound assurance of governments to their citizens.

• For E.g. In the United States (US), deregulatory actions are focused on creating greater opportunities and prosperity for US citizens than ever before.
• A group of Republican congressmen in the US has sponsored a Freedom from Regulations Act – to reduce regulatory on citizens by ensuring transparency and accountability.

Narrow View of Ease of Living in India: The government’s idea of ease of living has been limited to: 

• Perception surveys on the quality of life in cities, conducted by the Union ministry of housing and urban affairs 
• A nationwide survey on the delivery of basic services to assess households deprived of flagship schemes, done by the Ministry of Rural Development.

Way Forward: India’s existing regulatory cholesterol needs to be reduced simultaneously.

• Create a Database of Regulations: through a structured process informed by public consultation and cost-benefit analysis and user-friendly interface.

• Regulation to be subjected to 3-step tests:

• Legality: If there is no primary law from which it emanates, or if some part of it exceeds the remit of the source legislation, it should be struck down as ultra vires.

• Necessity: which requires examining its objectives, the process involved in achieving them, and the relevance as well as the possibility of their being achieved.

• Proportionality: Analyzing direct and indirect costs and benefits imposed on stakeholders, especially the vulnerable sections.

• Setting up a Regulatory Impact Assessment Framework: to implement the above 3 step tests:

• This would ensure robust stakeholder consultation, particularly taking into account the perspectives of those groups that typically remain unrepresented in regulation-making.

• Decentralization of the Exercise: Need to be conducted at central, state and local levels, and should involve all relevant government departments.

Conclusion: The Indian government must realize that reducing the unease of living is a prerequisite for achieving the ease of living. The sooner this happens, the better.