India ranks 135, in the last quartile.

But the story that should hurt more is even more predictable: the slow pace of delivering justice, through the timely enforcement of contracts. Theoretically, the faster contracts are enforced, the greater the velocity of money, goods and services into and out of the country. This, as we all know, leads to greater trade among nations, more profits for the entrepreneur, increased capital formation for the country and, in most cases, particularly in the high-end knowledge economy of today that includes factory workers as well as genetic engineers, a boost in the country’s employment. In this report, this factor has been defined as number of procedures from filing a lawsuit in court till payment, time taken to resolve the dispute, and costs incurred.

On this count, India stands ranked at 177, better than only Timor-Leste. It takes 1,420 days to enforce a contract. To put that in perspective and among comparable BRIC nations, that’s more than double of Brazil’s 616 days, 3.5 times China’s 406 days and more than five times Russia’s 281 days. Only five countries do worse than India on this count — Bangladesh, Guatemala, Afghanistan, Suriname and Timor-Leste. The country has 46 procedures the investor has to negotiate — one more than Brazil, nine more than Russia and 11 more than China. The investor, on an average, has to shell out as much as two-fifths of the debt value vis-a-vis 16.5 per cent in Brazil, 13.4 per cent in Russia and 8.8 per cent in China.

... contd.