India, Sept. 29 -- First, let us settle a long-standing semantic dispute. A few weeks ago, the Highways and Surface Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari stated that he has vowed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi that the country's logistics costs would come down from above 14 per cent to single-digits by 2026. A few days ago, Piyush Goyal, who handles the commerce and industry portfolio indirectly indicated that the logistics costs in India were already in single-digits, at eight per cent.

Why indirectly? Within Goyal's ministry, there is a Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade that sponsored a detailed research study of logistics costs, which was conducted by the think tank, National Council of Applied Economic Research. The...