MUMBAI: The prime minister’s office ( PMO ) has made a rare outreach to top global consultancy McKinsey and several MNCs operating in India to discuss ways to unshackle India’s burdensome regulations to enhance the ease of doing business in India, three people who attended the meeting told ET.Senior-most bureaucrats from the PMO met representatives of McKinsey and top executives of the Indian subsidiaries of Boeing, Unilever , Coca Cola, ABB and Vodafone on September 24.Modi’s trusted bureaucrat Nripendra Misra, principal secretary at the PMO, with other bureaucrats sat through a detailed presentation by McKinsey’s senior partner Alok Kshirsagar and his team on ideas to improve the way business is done in India, the sources said.Kshirsagar’s presentation also had CEOs including Vodafone’s Sunil Sood, Boeing India’s Pratyush Kumar. Hindustan Unilever’s Sanjiv Mehta, Venkatesh Kini of Coca Cola, Sanjeev Sharma of ABB, Ranjit Shahani of Novartis among others. Misra chaired the meeting with a phalanx of bureaucrats from the PMO including Amitabh Kant, CEO, Niti Aayog and joint secretaries TV Somanathan and Anurag Jain.Digitisation of labour law compliance and extending Modi’s `self-certification’ initiative for individuals and companies, with sufficient deterrence for misrepresentation , was among the issues that were on top of the agenda of the meeting Misra chaired, they said.Ways to streamline onerous compliance processes, eliminating paperwork and obsolete processes and resolve inconsistencies across ministries was also discussed as also the need to iron out differences in Indian and global standards.One of the senior bureaucrats present at the meeting was reluctant to elaborate on what transpired saying it is “early days yet.” Two CEOs who were present at the meeting corroborated this, but declined further comment saying the discussions were confidential.An email sent to McKinsey & Co’s Indian operations sought time but later said their officials were travelling.Misra is said to have assigned tasks to his bureaucrat colleagues for a time-bound plan and directed them to take “rapid action” on the prioritised items.One point that engaged all was a plan to rationalise central and state procedures by simplifying and digitising labour law compliance. Eliminating the use of physical registers at factories and service enterprises and developing clear guidelines at service enterprises and factories by expanding the use of Shram Suvidha portal for all central labour laws to as a single online window was a suggestion that found favour.It is learnt that the PMO will be closely monitoring the progress on this front. The principal secretary will conduct a review in 30 days.Increasing the use of self-certification by companies and clear norms for penalties and resolution of disputes was also discussed. The movement towards a trust-based compliance regime will be bolstered with heavy penalties for violations, as is prevalent in the western economies, was a solution suggested.Increase the use of accredited 3rd party certification agencies for accredited labs for food that may have raised concerns was also discussed, presumably prompted by the recent fallout from the Nestle Maggi fiasco.Another important topic that the top brass of corporate India discussed was the need to harmonise reporting requirements and formats including MCA 21 and accelerate use of Udyog Adhar and integrate it with e-biz portal.One of the problems identified was that once the inspectors checked the compliance of government norms, a follow-up was not strictly carried out. The meeting arrived at a consensus on need to make inspectors vigorously follow up on post-compliance outcomes, and draft standardised metrics for them to use in major sectors.It is important to see how many trees have survived and not how many trees have been planted, it was pointed out at the meeting.Another issue was to have MNCs expand the use of micro, small and medium enterprises by letting vendor financing solutions as a negotiable instrument to meet the 45-day payment requirement. One of the submissions made at the meeting was to have uniform guidelines for cell towers and right of way to be deployed across municipalities and states. Currently, the industry needs at least 10 approvals per tower and each has differing interpretationsThe government is also looking at digitising aerospace and defence outset compliance processes which currently involved 1000 plus pages of paperwork.The group also argued for a predictable time period of 6-8 weeks from notification of price changes and execution and move to a prospective mandate. For instance, price changes for pharma products should be only for those manufactured on or after the date of notification rather than requiring the recall and waste of existing stock to re-label each one.However, legal circles are not very enthused. They believe only legislative actions can change things in a more lasting way and brainstorming in itself means little in way of government setting policy.“This is not easy. There are legislative provisions that need to be changed. Unless that is changed, there is no point of window dressing,” Suhas Tuljapurkar, managing partner, Legasis Partners.Saying that what the government hope to do is systematically move away from the current regime which is “comply or perish” to the next level of “comply or explain,” which is prevalent in U.K and other European nations.“The mindsets of regulators and inspectors have to move towards that,” Tulzapurkar added. Otherwise, whatever the government does will be “merely a whitewash.”The meeting also discussed increased accountability of self-regulatory bodies like Advertising Standards Council of India.After the deliberations, Misra apparently expressed enthusiasm for a similar meeting on enhancing trade and investments with the group of CEOs with a focus on easing domestic and international processes to facilitate rapid growth.Centre & states must push reformsThe Prime Minister’s initiative is welcome, given the commendable goals he has set to improve India’s position in the ease of doing business. Hopefully, big ideas will emanate. But there are many obvious things for both the Centre and states to do in areas such as enforcing contracts and improving courts to resolve disputes. India also needs swiftly operationalize the bankruptcy code to resolve insolvency. Doing business here is tardy due to the opaqueness in political funding. Reform to make poll funding transparent will bring about a sea change.