<\/a>
\nI am often accused of being extremely pessimistic about things.<\/p>\nMay be that\u2019s a function of having grown up in erstwhile Bihar, when Lalu Prasad Yadav ruled the state, first directly and then through Rabri Devi.<\/p>\n
It was an era when there was nothing to look forward to and that possibly led to me becoming extremely pessimistic about most things and a cynic to boot.<\/p>\n
The cynicism and the pessimism got further refined when I first spent three years trying to do a PhD (academics can do that to you) and then spent nearly seven years working in daily newspapers. \u201cIf it bleeds, it leads,\u201d is an oft repeated dictum in the media, though this has started to change in the recent past.<\/p>\n
In this scenario, my contacts in the financial services industry (mutual funds, insurance, stock broking and so on) keep telling me that I am extremely pessimistic about things. \u201cThings are not as bad as they seem,\u201d I am often told. But then they need to sell things but I don\u2019t.<\/p>\n
So today\u2019s column is an exception to me being pessimistic all the time\u2014but only slightly.<\/p>\n
The World Bank released its Ease of Doing Business Rankings on October 27, 2015. India moved up four positions to 130, out of 189 nations which were a part of the ranking. This is a jump of four places in comparison to last year.<\/p>\n
Certain sections of the media made a lot of song and dance about India\u2019s rank jumping twelve positions to the 130th position. But that is incorrect. When the rankings were first released last year, India was at 142nd position. Nevertheless, the World Bank later revised the ranking to 134, after it started following a new methodology.<\/p>\n
Hence, India\u2019s ranking has jumped by only four positions and not 12 positions as a reasonably large section of the media seems to have reported.
\nThe ranking is carried out on multiple parameters (as can be seen from the accompanying table).<\/p>\n