New Year resolution: Cut business costs

India's rise through the rankings is a relative development. It stands to benefit from deterioration of the Chinese environment. But it is also overshadowed by much more rapid gains in Vietnam. The benchmark will necessarily have to be countries that are doing better than India for it to be able to offer an alternative base for global manufacturing value chains. The ranking methodology uses per-capita income to normalise scores, and this requires India to reduce both absolute and relative costs.