The Public Affairs Centre is a non-profit NGO think tank of India. For the second year, they have now released their ranking of States of India in the Public Affairs Index on Governance of 2017. One of eleven themes they compared is economic freedom, which deals with the efforts made by each state to enhance economic growth. They took the number of filed industrial entrepreneurs memoranda, the World Bank ease of doing business index, and the value of MSMEs assets into account. As a result, the following eight states ranked on top:
- Gujarat
- Telangana
- Maharashtra
- Andhra Pradesh
- Rajasthan
- Madhya Pradesh
- Uttar Pradesh
- Tamil Nadu
Info and image source: Public Affairs Centre, Bangalore.
Six of these eight states are also members of the GDP based G8x8. Only Karnataka and Kerala, ranking 4th and 8th in GDP, are listed much lower in the Economic Freedom Index: 10th and 16th.