Working Papers

This paper discusses that while mature firms are becoming “net job destroyers” as they automate, it is the young, agile “Ojazelles” — firms less than five years old — that are currently breathing life into the economy, creating 45% of all new jobs. Yet, these young job creators are being strangled by “Structural Brakes”: a Collateral Trap that prizes ancestral land over fresh ideas, and a Regulatory Tax that punishes firms for growing. The paper proposes a New Social Compact to release these brakes. By leveraging India’s world leading Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), we can bypass the old “Land Finance Nexus” and move to Information Based Lending, where a young person’s talent and data become their new collateral.