Bringing Reforms in India - Work that needs to be in progress

Global investors worldwide are critic of India's attempt to address key issues like tax evasion via retrospective tax-related measures. A lot of investors were dissatisfied with this and started withdrawing dollars from Indian market. As a result of this, Finance Ministry of India has put GAAR on hold amid pressure from investors. This step I believe to be as positive even though we are yet to debate on this issue which is far from being resolved.

Corruption is another pinching subject which is related to tax-evasion. In fact, both developed and developing nations are facing this menace which tends to negate investment growth and demoralize investors confidence. The positive side however is corrupt practices cannot stay in the back-end for a longer time thanks to the information technology era. Social media in particular has put the policy markers under radar to address issues because people of the nation are watching and reporting it to the entire world. Corruption charges over last few years in particular has put India under hammer and the steps taken to stop this is watching worldwide.

Bring the Change

To be honest, I feel India needs a lot of reforms today, but I am equally optimistic that the nation will find its way out of these tough times. Have no doubts, India has huge potential for its long-term investors as well as people of India. Not to be influenced by some shocking headlines, the fact remains that all of the BRIC nations still have a have a better economic outlook than many of the developed nations, who still bear the burden of slow growth and debt.

Last couple of years has seen outraged protests happening across India which has made corruption a top priority agenda for policymakers. Activism obviously is one of the primary steps to highlight this issue. While anti-corruption activists are finding support from people, there is also this power of social and electronic media which can influence the system. States here have a key role to play and hence, the protests must also be inline with the actions at state level on the large.

A lot of national assets are misused by people who are in power and India is not a sole case. With series of scams and revenue losses exposed in last couple of years in India, indulging into easy corruption is not that easy as it was 10-15 years ago. Though the existing lot of politicians and bureaucrats are highly unlikely to reform the system, one can only hope that the next breed of politicians are more cautious in dealing with this.

The Way Forward...

The road ahead at the onset of these exposure of scams is that impetus for change needs to be provide. The Media power, the RTI increasing use of information technology in private and public sectors/services should help to play more than useful role in reducing corruption practices. 

• Opening up the economy and creating surpluses is one way to reduce corruption which otherwise tends to grow rampantly due to shortage of surpluses in the economy. 
• More clarity in law always helps the Indian judiciary to better consolidate what is right and wrong. Indian judiciary's support to put citizen and nation interests first and some of recent interventions by Indian higher courts is a fitting example of that. 
• An independent investigative body which is free from any government or ministerial influence is a key to have investigations come to its factual and logical conclusions.
• Having clearly defined telecom licensing and mining rights is a key.

One does feel there is a hug scope of improvement where India needs to enact measures to show that it has started to adopt the right path. 

A lot of India's state-owned companies are gradually opening up following 'integrity pacts' developments. Over 40+ companies are now implementing integrity pacts with Transparency International, India. With such active participation, the procurement processes are surely going to be more transparent.

It is so easy to get discouraged by crores of scams and quite rightly so, but there is not an iota of doubt that India continues to be a destination of investment and growth moving ahead. The nation's trends of a growing middle-class people, GDP growth and its domestic consumption for consumer goods are a key to its increasing opportunities at offer seen by investors, both local and global investors. 

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Source:
http://www.transparencyindia.org/

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f3a7bafc-7437-11e1-9951-00144feab49a.html#axzz1vllHUfal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Information_Act,_2005
Transparency International, India - A coalation against corruption Press release [PDF]