108th SKOCH Summit: Public Policy Forum - Regulatory Framework for Viksit Bharat

The primary role of SKOCH Summit is to act as a bridge between felt needs and policy making. Most conferences act like echo-chambers with all plurality of view being locked out. At SKOCH, we have specialised into negotiating with different view-points and bringing them to a common minimum agenda based on felt needs at the ground. This socio-economic dimension is critical for any development dialogue and we happen to be the oldest and perhaps only platform fulfilling this role. It is important to base decisions on learning from existing and past policies, interventions and their outcomes as received by the citizens. Equally important is prioritising and deciding between essentials and nice to haves. This then creates space for improvement, review or even re-design. Primary research, evaluation by citizens as well as experts and garnering global expertise then become hallmark of every Summit that returns actionable recommendations and feed them into the ongoing process of policy making, planning and development priorities.

Summit

Public Policy Forum - Regulatory Framework for Viksit Bharat

20 June 2026
09:00 - 17:30
PHD House, Siri Fort Road, New Delhi

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India’s ambition to achieve developed-economy status by 2047 under the Viksit Bharat vision rests on expanding productive capacity, on engineering a structural transition toward innovation-led, knowledge-intensive growth. It is a transition that is fundamentally contingent on the quality, coherence and forward-orientation of its regulatory architecture.

This conference advances the argument that regulatory framework design is a primary macroeconomic variable, not a secondary administrative consideration and that India’s ability to sustain high-quality growth over the coming decades will be determined in significant part by whether its institutions are recalibrated to incentivise discovery, reward complexity and attract long-horizon investment.

Drawing on productivity economics and institutional analysis, the conference examines the relationship between regulatory design and key economic performance indicators (including total factor productivity (TFP), incremental capital-output ratio (ICOR) and the depth of industrial upgrading) to demonstrate that regulatory fragmentation, compliance asymmetries and institutional gaps represent binding constraints on India’s innovation potential. It will interrogate a critical structural tension at the heart of India’s development moment. The gap between a regulatory environment historically optimised for factor-driven, imitation-based industrial expansion and the demands of an economy seeking to compete at the knowledge frontier.

Rather than just focusing on deregulation, it is an opportune time for India to advance a capability-centric model of regulatory modernisation, one that builds institutional credibility, reduces uncertainty for R&D-intensive investors and creates the enabling conditions for domestically anchored innovation ecosystems to take root and scale.

It will further explore how strategic alignment with international regulatory standards and global best practices can function as an instrument of economic statecraft, strengthening India’s positioning in global value chains while preserving the sovereign policy space essential for inclusive development.

This conference will offer both a diagnostic of India’s current regulatory limitations and a rigorous, actionable reform agenda for institutions, policymakers and industry stakeholders committed to making Viksit Bharat an economic reality.