Economic Survey 2017: Volume I: Chapter 9: Ease of Doing Business’ Next Frontier: Timely Justice

The government’s efforts to make business and commerce easy have been widely acknowledged. The next frontier on the ease of doing business is addressing pendency, delays and backlogs in the appellate and judicial arenas. These are hampering dispute resolution and contract enforcement, discouraging investment, stalling projects, hampering tax collections but also stressing tax payers, and escalating legal costs. Coordinated action between government and the judiciary-- a kind of horizontal Cooperative Separation of Powers to complement vertical Cooperative Federalism between the central and state governments-- would address the “Law’s delay” and boost economic activity.