Ease of doing business in India: Why rationalising 69,233 compliance requirements Is only half the answer

India has spent the last several years trying to make it easier to do business by simplifying procedures, eliminating redundant requirements, digitising approvals and decriminalising minor defaults. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Commerce’s August 2026 report, Doing Business in India: The Way Forward, acknowledges the scale of that effort. Under the Reducing Compliance Burden initiative, more than 47,000 compliance requirements have been reduced, simplified, digitised or decriminalised.

And yet the same report records a striking concern from industry stakeholders: a typical firm operating in India must still navigate 1,536 Acts, 69,233 compliance requirements and 6,618 statutory filings across the three tiers of government. That juxtaposition is important. It suggests that regulatory rationalisation is working, but also that rationalisation alone cannot solve the compliance problem faced by businesses.

The scale of the problem has not disappeared

The Committee’s report itself explains why. It notes that overlapping rules continue to create operational costs and that, even after the consolidation contemplated under the four Labour Codes, businesses must contend with Central and State-specific requirements. It also records that the Reducing Compliance Burden programme has made notable progress at the Central level while local-level compliances remain unaddressed in many States.

This matters because compliance is experienced by a business not as a national headline number but at the level of an individual entity, factory, office, warehouse, project or other operating location. The relevant obligations can vary with the nature of the activity, the sector, the State and the local authority. The Committee therefore recommends sector-specific compliance roadmaps developed with industry and State Governments, along with stronger implementation at the district level.

The direction of reform: simpler, digital and trust-based

The Committee’s recommendations point clearly towards the next phase of reform. It calls for redundant or overlapping licences to be merged, an automated Joint Site Inspection framework to replace parallel inspections by different departments, and greater use of third-party certification and trust-based self-reporting for lower-risk sectors. It also recommends Mutual Recognition Agreements between State inspectorates so that safety and technical inspection certificates issued in one State are recognised elsewhere without repetitive testing.

The National Single Window System is central to this approach. The Committee recommends that regulatory approvals and renewals be brought onto the NSWS in a time-bound manner, with all licences, permissions, approvals and renewals operating against clearly defined timelines. It goes further by recommending automatic deemed approval on expiry of the prescribed service-level timeline, together with real-time dashboards showing processing performance and delays.

Trust-based regulation changes the enterprise compliance burden

These proposals are intended to reduce friction for business. But there is an important consequence that deserves more attention. A move towards self-certification, third-party certification, risk-based inspections and automatic renewals does not make compliance less important. It changes where the responsibility sits.

Where a regulator relies more heavily on an enterprise’s own certification and inspects on a risk basis, the enterprise must be able to determine what applies to it, ensure that the required action has been completed, maintain the supporting record and demonstrate compliance when called upon to do so. In other words, reducing regulatory touchpoints can increase the importance of strong internal compliance systems.

Rationalisation is only half the answer

There are therefore two related but distinct problems. The first is the Government’s problem: simplify the regulatory universe, remove duplication, align regulators, digitise approvals and make regulatory processes more predictable. The Committee’s recommendations address this directly.

The second is the enterprise’s problem: make the remaining regulatory universe manageable in day-to-day operations. Even if the total number of requirements comes down significantly, a large organisation still needs to identify which obligations apply to which entities and locations, understand regulatory changes, track licences and renewals, allocate responsibility, monitor completion and identify gaps. No exercise in legislative rationalisation can perform those functions for an individual enterprise.

Where technology fits

This is where technology becomes the operational layer between regulatory reform and actual compliance. A well-designed compliance management system can centralise applicable requirements, monitor regulatory changes, track approvals and renewals, provide visibility over compliance status and identify gaps across a complex organisation. Compliance management software such as KomriskAI are intended to make this operational layer manageable. As regulation becomes more digital, risk-based and trust-based, that internal visibility becomes more rather than less important.

Technology cannot make 69,233 compliance requirements disappear nor should technology be used as a substitute for sensible regulatory reform. But it can make a complex regulatory environment considerably easier to navigate, while giving management greater confidence that what should have been done has in fact been done.

Conclusion

The Parliamentary Committee’s report is therefore significant not merely because it identifies the remaining regulatory bottlenecks, but because it points towards a different regulatory compact: fewer unnecessary requirements, more digital and time-bound approvals, greater reliance on trust and stronger accountability for outcomes. The Government’s rationalisation effort and an enterprise’s compliance-management effort should be seen as complementary. The first reduces the burden that regulation creates; the second ensures that the obligations which remain can be understood, managed and evidenced consistently. That is the other half of the Ease of Doing Business challenge.

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Authored by: Naisha Mishra

Co-Authored by: Amiya Mukherjee

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