Will India's rank change? WB to recalculate ease of doing business rankings

Giving credence to the theory that the World Bank's popular ease of doing business (EODB) ranking is not credible and accurate, its chief economist Paul Romer has announced to recalculate the national rankings of business competitiveness going back to at least four years.

The announcement, which has raised several questions on the authenticity of the EODB report, was made by Romer in an interview to The Wall Street Journal in which he made a personal apology to Chile, the ranking of which has come down from 34th in 2014 to 57th in 2017.
"I want to make a personal apology to Chile, and to any other country where we conveyed the wrong impression," Romer told The Wall Street Journal.

Romer's statement that the national ranking of ease of doing business would be carried for last four years, could have a notable impact on India as its ranking jumped from 140 in 2014 to 100 in 2018.

The problems with the report, he said, were "my fault because we did not make things clear enough."
According to the daily, Romer said the World Bank is "beginning the process of correcting the past reports and republishing what the rankings would have been without the methodology changes".
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World Bank gives Aadhaar thumbs up; wants other nations to adopt it too

As the government is in the process of linking Aadhaar cards with an array of schemes and programmes amid criticism, the system has been lauded by World Bank chief economist Paul Romer. He feels that other nations should also adopt this system.

"The Aadhaar system is the most sophisticated identification programme in the world," said Romer in an interview with Bloomberg. 

Romer asserted that it is best to develop one standardised system so people can carry their IDs wherever they go in the world.

"It’s the basis for all kinds of connections that involve things like financial transactions. It could be good for the world if this became widely adopted," Romer said. 

Interestingly, countries like Tanzania, Afghanistan and Bangladesh have shown interest in the Aadhaar system and visited India, Nandan Nilekani, former chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), who created Aadhaar said. 

In 2016, RS Sharma, chairman of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) told Mint that Russia, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia have also shown interest in Aadhaar. 

However, many critics suggest that Aadhaar could put privacy at stake. In 2013, a group of petitioners, including a retired judge of the Karnataka High Court, approached the Supreme Court saying that the Aadhaar scheme is an “infringement” on the right of privacy of citizens.

In countries like UK, France and USA similar plans are widely debated. In 2010, UK announced that it was scrapping a plan for a national identity register after objections that it infringed on civil liberties, but it continues to issue biometric residence permits for foreigners. In France a mega database for biometric details of citizens is under the scanner. In US, identity theft complaints were the second-most reported in 2015, Federal Trade Commission said. 

Romer rubbished such concerns saying, "It should be part of the policy of the government to give individuals some control over the data that the private firms collect and some control over how that data is used." (READ MORE)