A Maximalist Approach to Data from India’s New Insolvency and Bankruptcy System

Abstract

The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India has a statutory responsibility to gather and disseminate information about India’s new insolvency and bankruptcy system. That system is still in its infancy, and the Board has a unique opportunity to design a comprehensive approach to generating, gathering, and disseminating data. Empirical research on bankruptcy in the U.S. illustrates that data are essential for assessing how insolvency and bankruptcy systems function, how they affect various stakeholders, and what economic and social impact they are having. Data generated by insolvency and bankruptcy systems can also be a uniquely valuable source of information about the broader economy and society, including macro-economic vulnerabilities and failures plaguing certain financial products.

This chapter proposes that the Board and the adjudicating tribunals under the India's new Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code adopt a maximalist approach to data, limited only by institutional capacity and basic privacy norms. It describes types of data that the new insolvency and bankruptcy system can generate, challenges in gathering and disseminating it, and the comparative advantages that the Board and the tribunals have in doing so. This chapter also proposes that the Board conduct a pilot or diagnostic study of the data currently being generated by the system to determine its reliability, consistency, and usability for both internal assessment and external research.

Keywords: insolvency, bankruptcy, data, India