"The most painful experience is being in business in India."

Few years ago I use to regularly analyse the trends of doing business both country level and sub-region level and always felt that its extremely painful to look at the data in comparison with other country like China. 

Thanks to friend Athiyaman. The title of this post comes from this interview with noted Indian businessman. Its a must read one. Here is a bit from it:

Looking back, what has been your biggest regret?

I have been an employee for many years, and an employee-cum-businessman for about 10 years. And then, I have been solely a businessman. I have had different kinds of experiences.

I don’t regret anything. I take life as it comes. There is no point in regretting. You can ask me which experience was unpleasant and which one pleasant. Being in employment is wonderful. The most painful experience is being in business in India. The ease of doing business is one of the worst in India. The difficulties and pains associated with doing business is probably the highest in India as opposed to most other countries.

Why then are you continuing in it?

It’s like getting on to a tiger, and you can’t get off. You have to make the best of the bad bargain, and this is the experience of all businessmen. The outside world thinks that the businessmen are happy, and that they have lot of money. The attitude towards businessmen should be that of sympathy and support. Unfortunately, it is marked by jealousy.

According to Raghuram Rajan, “government regulations aim for impossible”. A person who enters the business goes around these regulations, and finds a way to avoid them. Finally, he is caught, because he is avoiding these regulations.

You then try to put more regulations to see that he doesn’t avoid them. Regulations are the starting cause of bribery. Such a system is designed for corruption. All these regulations are created by government because there are too many employees, too many offices, too many departments and too many executives who have nothing positive to think.