Opinion From Licence Raj to Jan Vishwas, what we need to set our entrepreneurs free
The proposed Jan Vishwas Siddhant is transformational. All licences outside the four areas of national security, public safety, human health and environment will be converted to perpetual self-registration
The Jan Vishwas Siddhant will transform ruling into governing and praja into nagrik. It will accelerate non-farm job creation by recognising that entrepreneurship is iterative hypothesis testing, not planning. 
The hard art of entrepreneurship — staying alive long enough to get lucky — was made harder in 1956, 1967 and 1976 by the Indian state. The madhyam marg between trust and regulation was substantially but incompletely restored in 1991. The unfinished agenda of deregulation is hardly poorna swaraj — if entrepreneurship thrived without laws or a state, then Pakistan’s Swat Valley would be a hotbed of venture capital. But adopting the trust-based deregulation proposed by the new Jan Vishwas Siddhant will undermine the six pathologies of regulatory cholesterol holding back India’s entrepreneurs, mass prosperity, and global power.
The first pathology is prior approval. The most gracious memories of my childhood in Kashmir involve my parents asking, “Ijaazat hai (Do we have permission)?” before leaving a host. But my most ungraceful memories over 30 years as a first-generation entrepreneur involve answering, “Who allowed you to do this (Ijaazat kisne di)?” This is a profound question from a theory-of-knowledge and constitutional perspective: Innovation is, by definition, permissionless, and doing business is a fundamental right (Article 19). Yet, employers confront prior approvals in battalions — licences, NOCs, permissions, consent orders, etc: 500 from central ministries and over 3,200 from 1,200 state ministries.
The second pathology is instrument proliferation. Our Constitution imagines two instruments: Laws made by Parliament and rules made by the executive. Our administrative state ignores this imagination of only one level of subsidiary legislation by creating multiple, often unnotified, instruments — notification, guideline, circular, regulation, directions, general or office order, guidance notes, policy, scheme, press release, FAQ, SOP, memorandum, etc. — with penal sanctions. Policymakers read left to right — Act + rules. But entrepreneurs read right-to-left: compliances + 16 non-law, non-rule instruments + rules + Acts. The 700-plus central and state Acts relevant to employers have hundreds of rules, but our guesstimate is that 12,000-plus non-law, non-rule instruments matter for employers.
Third, the compliance blind spot. Most policymakers remember substantive provisions of legislation, but lose track of cumulative compliance obligations. Our administrative state often ignores a best practice in regulation: Targeting outcomes and impacts rather than microspecifying activities, inputs, or processes. I define compliance as an obligation imposed on an entrepreneur punishable by law for omission or wrongful commission. It is not guidance or good practice. It is “shall”, not “may”. 2025 started with over 69,000 compliances. We end the year with new codes that shrink the labour law compliance burden by 75 per cent. This rationalisation needs wide replication in 2026.
The fourth pathology is enforcing the unenforceable. The constitutional distinction between Fundamental Rights (guaranteed by law) and Directive Principles (desirable but not guaranteed) is not low ambition but a clear-eyed assessment of avoiding promises the state can’t keep. Noble intentions — one inspector checking 3.3 lakh weight and measuring instruments — breed corruption and transmission losses between how the law is written, interpreted, practised, and enforced. Policy ambition lies in recognising that unenforceable legislation is a poor substitute for hard reform: The state doing less so it does more, performance management for 25 million civil servants who spend Rs 110 lakh crore every year, and prioritising prose over poetry.
Fifth, the process is punishment. The recent labour code and the forthcoming Jan Vishwas Bill recognise that jail is a deterrent only if there are prosecutions and cases filed. Most jail provisions in our laws are rarely successfully prosecuted and often used as threats. This clogs up the courts. An unintended consequence of criminalising the commercial contract of cheque bouncing is 43 lakh cases and 10 per cent of court pendency. The painful combination of microspecifications, disproportionate punishment, low probability of prosecution and massive delays creates an unjust equilibrium for the innocent.
The sixth pathology is no single source of truth. Justice and transparency require a single database for all Acts and rules, and the gazette notification of all guidelines, orders, circulars, etc, referencing the statutory provisions under which compliance is sought. Entrepreneurs often succumb to corruption because the “truth” is unverifiable, dated or incomplete. A live, comprehensive digital database precedes the valuable government guarantee to citizens and entrepreneurs that nobody needs to comply with anything not in this database.
The proposed Jan Vishwas Siddhant is transformational. All licences outside the four areas of national security, public safety, human health and environment will be converted to perpetual self-registration. Everything is permitted till prohibited. Inspections will be random, risk-based and mostly third-party. The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade’s (DPIIT) decriminalisation principles must be applied to all penal provisions, and punishments must be proportionate. Regulatory changes will occur only after consultation, with sufficient transition time provided, and transitions will be effective on a fixed annual date (say January 1). Filings will be digitised, and regulatory instruments with penal provisions will be restricted to laws and rules. IndiaCode will become the live database with all Acts and rules, and after integration with e-gazette, a single source of truth for all obligations. An annual regulatory impact assessment framework by all central ministries will lead to annual reports on compliance and punishment.
Every entrepreneur battles market risk, financing scarcity, employee responsibility, skill shortage, family scepticism and self-doubt. Combine these with our regulatory cholesterol, and our 6.3 crore enterprises translate to only 30,000 companies with a paid-up capital of more than Rs 10 crore. Most of our employers being dwarfs, not babies, and our labour being handicapped without capital is a direct consequence of economic choices, not circumstances or culture.
The Jan Vishwas Siddhant will transform ruling into governing and praja into nagrik. It will accelerate non-farm job creation by recognising that entrepreneurship is iterative hypothesis testing, not planning. Freeing entrepreneurs from ijaazat focuses them on koshish (trying). And, as poet Sohanlal Dwivedi reminds us, “Koshish karnewaalon ki haar nahin hoti (those who keep trying never lose).”
The writer is co-founder, Teamlease Services
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