Beyond markets, capital and labour; beyond history, culture and attitude; beyond politics, policies and regulation; for global investors to look at any country for doing business, there is one absolute that overrides all other organisation of infrastructural relativities: speed. Doing business — from setting it up to closing it down and everything in between — is all about conforming to global benchmarks of efficiency, costs and justice, at a pace that doesn’t lock resources.

All other things being equal, the faster this process can take place, the more attractive the investment destination. In a capitalistic and globalised world, the speed with which capital is able to do the rounds of opportunity and mould together the three ingredients of business (markets, entrepreneurs and labour) becomes the key determinant of money flow to nations that are increasingly and constantly vying for the one form of money that comes to their shores and stays: foreign direct investment (FDI).

That India should rank 120 on a ranking of 178 countries in a World Bank report released last week is a shame. But this should come as no surprise for a country that’s doing a very good job of keeping the real parameters of doing business, particularly for international investors, under a strong and ruthless status quo. Try closing a business and going beyond anecdotal evidence of brutal financial torture, the empirical evidence — as provided by

Doing Business 2008 — in terms of ‘recovery rate’ (or what the investor gets in the number of cents per dollar) is abysmal: at 11.59 cents,

... contd.