States should compete with each other: Arun Maira

New Delhi, April 3 (IANS) The states should improve their business regulatory environment and compete with each other, Planning Commission member Arun Maira said here Wednesday.

Participating in a session on “Economic reforms and the states: Are we in the next phase?” at the CII conference, Maira said India had a big agenda of governance and management reforms.

He said there was need to build capacity in states and establish processes for their learning from each other’s experiences.

“Every state must improve its business regulatory environment States must compete with other,” Maira said.

He said India needed more investment but investors were not coming in large numbers as their “investments have got struck”.

Maira said there was a need to remove infrastructure bottlenecks.

He also called for establishing processes that promote learning between states.

He said the second administrative reforms commission had recommended an agenda for reforms which should be followed up.

Surjit S. Bhalla, chairman, Oxus Investments, said the food security bill is sought to be implemented through “massive bureaucracy”.

He said the size of middle class was expanding and income levels of young women had risen over those of young men in the past 25 years.

“A revolution is taking place in India,” he said.

Bhalla said elections were often a test of good reform. He said governments in better-governed states were getting re-elected.

Janmejaya Sinha, chairman Asia pacific, Boston consulting group, who moderated the discussion, said aspirations were spreading in the middle class.

He said there were an estimated 112 million children in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh under the age of 15 years.

Sinha said the electorate was increasingly exerting pressure on the elected representatives for creating avenues of employment.

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