India’s states are the primary drivers of the country’s economic growth, yet they have vastly different, and often opaque, methods of publishing the policies and legislation that investors, businesses and the public depend on. Legislation passes, schemes and programmes are announced, and administrative orders are issued, but the underlying documents frequently never reach the public domain.
This is not for lack of ambition. The central government’s push to digitise citizen services and ease business requirements has been substantial. But at the state level, where growth is actually won or lost, the gap remains wide and costly.For over 10 years, the Washington DC-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has been tracking policymaking at the state level. In 2023, we also began tracking what happens after states announce policies—do primary-source documents needed to support implementation actually enter the public domain?
Since then, our tracker has recorded 438 policies announced by numerous states without the policy documents being published on government websites. Of these, 24 primary-source documents were published much later, but the remaining 414 announced policies (94.5 per cent) still lack a primary-source document to this day.Policy transparency matters in a number of ways. Investors and businesses need predictability and stability to make long-term capital commitments. Businesses can plan supply chains, hiring and expansion when regulatory timelines and criteria are clear and publicly available. Compliance costs are reduced when businesses can access policies without navigating complex government websites. Publishing policies in a timely manner helps build trust and confidence.To illustrate, Delhi approved a Start-up and Incubation Policy in early July 2026, but the document available on the Delhi Department of Industries website is the draft policy from 2025. Neither the Industries Department nor Delhi’s Udyog Mitra (Business Partner) Portal reflects the updated policy. In fact, under the Policies and Notifications drop-down menu on Udyog Mitra, a user clicking on the Industrial Policy is directed to Delhi’s Industrial Policy approved in 2010, under then Congress Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit.
