Proposals to expand the Jan Vishwas reforms through three steps, Siddhant (trust-based regulation), Sangreh (a single source of legislative truth) and Ashwasan (only published obligations are enforceable), are being put forward to make business easier and create better-paid formal jobs.

• The argument: India’s problem is described as wages, not jobs. Heavy, unclear regulation makes it hard for firms to combine land, labour and capital into productive jobs.
• Siddhant: A philosophy of trust built on freedom, necessity and proportionality, which must be adopted by officials at every level, over 30 million civil servants.
• Sangreh: A single, searchable, machine-readable national repository of all laws and obligations, run as a legal digital public infrastructure.
• Ashwasan: A guarantee that any obligation not published there cannot be enforced, through a draft Transparency of Rules Act.
• The six problems: Prior approval for everything, rules that cannot be enforced, process as punishment, 25 or more administrative instruments beyond the Acts, laws written for rare edge cases, and excessive criminalisation.

• Jan Vishwas Act, 2023: Decriminalised 183 provisions in 42 Central Acts run by 19 ministries, replacing jail terms with fines or warnings.
• 2025 Bill: Proposed 355 amendments in 16 Acts and was sent to a Select Committee.
• 2026 Bill: Widened to 79 Central Acts and 784 provisions, and reports say Parliament has passed it.
• Aim: Ease of living and doing business, and trust-based governance.

• Basic principle: People cannot plead ignorance of the law (ignorantia juris non excusat), so the State must make laws knowable and accessible.
• Supreme Court: In Harla v. State of Rajasthan (1952), the Court rejected “secret” laws unknown to those bound by them. In B.K. Srinivasan v. State of Karnataka (1987), it stressed that law must be knowable, and a law operates only when properly published.
• Today’s problem: Laws and obligations sit in the Gazette, the e-Gazette, India Code and many circulars on different websites.
• Other countries: The US (Federal Register), UK (legislation.gov.uk), EU (EUR-Lex), Singapore (Statutes Online) and Australia (Federal Register of Legislation) have official online repositories.
• How Sangreh would work: Every ministry and State keeps its own legal repository, and Sangreh gathers and indexes them into one open national view.

• Certainty: Enterprises and citizens gain predictability, and governments gain credibility.
• Less corruption: Hidden rules and discretion shrink.
• Jobs and wages: Lower compliance risk helps firms hire and pay formally.
• Rule of law: People are bound only by laws they can know.

• Mindset: Reform must reach millions of officials, not only statutes.
• Past failures: Past attempts failed because of poor design, weak capacity, fragmented power and weak technology.
• Federal reach: States have their own laws and rules.
• Safeguards: Decriminalisation must not weaken protection for safety, consumers and the environment.