BharatNotes What is Ease of Doing Business?
Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) captures how friendly an economy's regulatory environment is to private enterprise across the full firm lifecycle — opening, operating, expanding, and closing a business. For nearly two decades it was synonymous with the World Bank's Doing Business report, which ranked economies on parameters such as starting a business, getting electricity, registering property, paying taxes, trading across borders, and resolving insolvency.
The Doing Business series was discontinued in September 2021 after an independent review found data irregularities had improperly raised scores for China (2018), Saudi Arabia and the UAE (2020), and Azerbaijan (2019). The World Bank replaced it with a redesigned framework, Business Ready (B-READY), whose first edition was released in October 2024.
The new B-READY framework
B-READY assesses the business and investment climate across 10 topics covering the firm's life cycle and organises its findings into three pillars:
| Pillar | What it measures |
|---|---|
| Regulatory Framework | Clarity, fairness and quality of the rules governing business |
| Public Services | Government-provided infrastructure and digital services that aid compliance |
| Operational Efficiency | Actual time and cost of processes such as registration and dispute resolution |
A key improvement over Doing Business is that B-READY compares what laws say on paper with the reality on the ground. The inaugural 2024 report covered 50 economies with roughly 1,200 indicators per economy, and the World Bank aims to scale coverage to 180+ economies over three years.
India's status
India is scheduled for its first B-READY assessment in 2026 (per DPIIT/PIB, Feb 2026). Under the older system, India had climbed 79 ranks over five years to 63rd in the Doing Business 2020 report (up 14 places from 77th the previous year), aided by reforms in starting a business, construction permits, trading across borders, and the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016.
Domestically, the reform agenda is led by DPIIT through:
- Business Reforms Action Plan (BRAP) — a state-level reform scorecard; under BRAP 2024 only Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Kerala were rated Top Performers.
- Regulatory Compliance Burden (RCB) initiative — which, together with BRAP, has reduced over 47,000 compliances and delivered ~9,700 reforms across States and UTs (as of DPIIT, Feb 2026).
- National Single Window System (NSWS) — integrating 32 Central Ministries and 33 States/UTs, offering 300+ central and 3,000+ state-level approvals.
UPSC angle
EoDB is a recurring GS3 theme linked to industrial growth, FDI, infrastructure and structural reforms, with a strong GS2 federalism dimension through state-wise BRAP rankings. A high-value analytical line for Mains is whether ranking improvements genuinely improved on-the-ground investment, MSME survival and employment, or merely reflected paperwork reform. Aspirants should track the Doing Business-to-B-READY shift, India's 2026 assessment, and the NSWS/BRAP/RCB toolkit.
