With reference to the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Report, which of the following statements is/are correct? 1) In Ease of Doing Business Report 2020, India's rank is 63. 2) India ranking for Ease of Doing Business in the year 2019 was 77. Select the correct answer using the codes given below:

Both statements are correct, so the answer is B. The Doing Business 2020 report, released in October 2019, placed India at 63rd rank, up from 77th in the Doing Business 2019 report released a year earlier. Statement 2 refers to that 2019 rank.

The core concept is the World Bank's composite index of regulatory ease for business, built from ten topics such as starting a business, getting credit, paying taxes, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency. Economies are scored against a best-practice frontier, so rank changes reflect relative reform. This links to Mains questions on the reform agenda, the role of states in implementing business regulations, and the limits of ranking-based governance.

Option A wrongly rejects statement 2, since 77 was India's 2019 rank. Option C wrongly rejects statement 1, since 63 was the 2020 rank. Option D rejects both and is wrong on both counts.

The World Bank discontinued the Doing Business report in September 2021 after data irregularities were found in earlier editions, so these rankings are no longer updated.

Trap: aspirants often swap the 2019 and 2020 ranks in memory or assume the earlier rank was better than 63, and then mark A or C.