A wish list for 2026: Much can be done by the government as it confronts the challenges India faces

“There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune… On such a full sea are we now afloat.” In that spirit, here’s a wish list for the Indian government as it confronts its many challenges.

‘Make in India’ needs to be comprehensively evaluated and then downsized. The ever growing list of incentivized industries—more than 25—makes a mockery of the claim that they are all strategic. Instead of this mission creep, we should focus on reducing our dependence on China.

The Trump tariffs are prompting Chinese firms to tighten their stranglehold over developing-world markets, leading to the progressive hollowing out of industry in Indonesia and India. Our data shows lower numbers for imports from China than Beijing’s export figures do, which suggests some under-invoicing.

Our bilateral trade deficit is about $100 billion.

Let’s redefine nationalism as spending less time abusing each other on social media and instead buying products made in India or at least from countries other than China. We need consistent public messaging to stop buying Chinese goods simply because they are cheaper.

A way to help that process and our exporters in the bargain is to let the rupee slide to a level of ₹100 to the dollar.

Former chief economic advisor Arvind Subramanian argued this week in the Indian Express that ₹100 per dollar is a worthy new-year resolution for the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), not least because China and East Asia have kept their currencies cheap to exploit foreign markets: “The markets are trying to do a desirable job that policymakers have been unable or unwilling to do.”

Indian companies are savvy enough to hedge their currency exposure.

We should do more to help our most labour-intensive industries: ‘Make in India’ needs to be rebranded as ‘Hand-Make in India.’ A much-needed pen-stroke reform, says Laila Tyabji, founder of Dastkar, is to “simply remove GST on handlooms; it needlessly increases the paperwork and end price.”

I buy handloom or hand-dyed cotton and walk 400 metres from my apartment to a tailor who adeptly makes shirts out of Kerala mundu material and even delicate jamdani that looks like candyfloss.

Consider renaming Ease of Doing Business as a more truthful ‘unease of doing business,’ thus focusing on reducing the complexity of dealing with the government.

It is wonderful, of course, that we can pay our taxes online almost as easily as buying a book off Amazon, but our tax system is still too complex and does little to widen the tax base. In fact, the last budget arguably narrowed it by raising the income threshold for income tax.

In a country as unequal as ours, we need an inheritance tax. Most G8 countries have one.

Those of us with considerable amounts of disposable income need to spend and donate more. In the spirit of Henry Ford raising wages in 1914 to raise productivity and turn factory workers into customers, we should regard paying employees more, viewing them as an investment as much as a cost. That starts at home.

Recently, I couldn’t help noticing the astonishment of visiting American relatives at how little the clothes-ironing person is paid.

We won’t ‘spoil’ help and service providers by paying them more or tipping a delivery ‘partner’ more generously. Instead, we will help alleviate the country’s demand problem that is holding back corporate investment.

The government could do its bit by thinking more like a service provider and less a judge, jury and overlord.

Says Arvind Singhal, chairman and founder of Technopak, “The bureaucracy, especially the IAS/IPS/IRS, needs to reform fundamentally, so that it can align with our present and future (rather than being a remnant of our British past).”

RBI governor Sanjay Malhotra is proving a good role model.

Not only has RBI made it easier for foreign companies to invest in Indian banks, it has also made it easier for banks to make loans for mergers and acquisitions. While it still spends tens of billions more than it should propping up the rupee, 5,673 circulars have been scrapped by RBI since he took over, CNBC reports.

The problem, at every level of government, is that mind-numbing references to precedent abound. Mumbai airport’s Terminal 1 is a relief for its sensibly sized trays for security checks, which are less than half the size of those in Delhi and Bengaluru and thus allow much faster clearance.

Even so, I counted at least 10 notebook registers being maintained by security personnel. One can’t help wondering what the “Tools In/Out register” tabulates or the “Dispatch English outgoing register” records.

India’s 48-hour weekly rest rules for pilots are among the most generous globally, while all around us are inefficient Indian companies demanding 13-hour workdays, often for six days a week.

Meanwhile, according to a column in The Hindu by R. Geetha and Prithi Narayan, protections for construction workers are “threatened or entirely repealed” by the country’s labour code revisions.

A new central code is to replace existing (mostly ineffectual) site inspections with “web-based” compliance, which makes little sense in this context. Construction workers work in pre-Dickensian conditions. It is not just airline pilots who deserve well-regulated work conditions.

Much of this is naïve and over-optimistic, but a new year beckons.