Libertarian law professor Richard Epstein reports from his recent trip to India:
Today, the central reforms that are needed in India have nothing to do with local cultural, historical, and religious differences. The usual panaceas of minimum wage and housing laws will not do the trick. The conditions are so arduous and deplorable that any more regulations, however modest, would consign millions of innocent Indians to a fate worse than that which they face by stripping from them the few options that are left under the current system.
At this point, the entire enterprise of reform should be directed toward growth. Toward that end, a three-pronged program is very much in order. First, India must prioritize unlimited foreign investment, no strings attached. That investment must be protected against expropriation from confiscation, regulation, and a weak legal system that is biased in favor of home players. The second reform is to remove all barriers of entry and exit into labor markets, by way of licensing restrictions and other similar tests. The third is the removal of all barriers of entry into the real estate markets, so that Indians have the option to shop at and work for western employers, such as Wal-Mart, which can offer efficiencies that cannot be matched by the current hodge-podge system.
