New Delhi: Even as a section of industry and some analysts have started expressing their impatience about the lack of anticipated big-bang reforms, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has quietly plugged away at measures that will make it easier to do business in the country.

On Thursday, it introduced a Bill effecting small but significant changes in labour laws in the Lok Sabha and expanded the role of the Project Monitoring Group in the cabinet secretariat with an eye on ensuring important projects are not stuck.

Earlier, on Wednesday, it allowed foreign direct investment (FDI) in railways and defence, apart from creating a process for judicial appointments.

Then, there is the emphasis on efficient administration, something that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has built his reputation on, based on his stint as chief minister of Gujarat.

The changes, some of which seek to create a potentially greater role for the private sector in businesses such as railways and defence, seem to be aimed at creating an ecosystem that can foster greater business activity and, hopefully, also create employment.

Background notes to some of the decisions reviewed by Mint reveal that the changes, some of which will require legislative amendments, seek to clean up processes and, in some cases, create a new investment regime that is friendly, even to foreign investors.

Take, for example, the move to clear the air on judicial appointments. The changes that will be introduced as part of the Judicial Amendments Bill sanitize the appointments. The meetings of the appointment commission will be held in-camera. And no single member of the six-person National Judicial Appointments Commission will be allowed a veto vote—dissent will need the support of at least two members.

An interesting aside is that the two eminent people on the panel are to be decided by a committee that will include the “leader of opposition (LoP)/leader of single largest party". (The NDA could well be signalling that the Congress is unlikely to be accorded the position of LoP; to be sure, this decision is to be taken by the speaker of the Lok Sabha.)

The proposed labour reforms target decades-old legislation: the Factories Act and the Apprentices Act. The underlying idea of the proposed amendments introduced in Parliament on Thursday is to create friendlier conditions for employment and most importantly to train people by encouraging companies to take young people on as apprentices.

To be sure, most of these initiatives have been in the pipeline even before the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) demitted office in May this year. The difference is that the NDA, unlike the UPA, packs the political punch to take on these hot-button issues given its strength in the Lok Sabha—though much of this can come unstuck in the Rajya Sabha (where the NDA is in a minority), as is threatening to happen with insurance reforms (which is probably why the emphasis on administrative measures that do not require legislative changes is important).

Indeed, even the Union Budget focused more on cleaning up processes rather than unleashing radical reforms.

The implicit strategy of the NDA seems to be to push for efficiency and productivity in the economy by cleaning up the processes even while it waits for investment momentum to revive.

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