India, April 24 -- One of the most important ideas in Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi's Independence Day speech last August was the call for a new wave of reform built around deregulation. Since Independence, the channels through which enterprise flows have progressively calcified. The business environment remains clogged by a thicket of rules, permissions, registrations, approvals, inspections, and renewals. The result is a structural tax on entrepreneurship.

At Independence, India adopted universal franchise and began industrialisation by placing the State in control of the commanding heights of the economy. This gradually evolved into the Licence Raj. Between 1960 and 1991, Indian enterprise was constrained by pervasive controls: Pr...