The MSME sector contributes 30 per cent to India’s GDP but delayed payments—courtesy public and private enterprises—have been its bane, impeding efforts to raise capital and scale up

Dressed in a white linen shirt, Dinesh Singhal, the founder of power transformers manufacturing company Kanohar Electricals, is carrying an unusual document, a copy of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996. Ask him about it and he says, “A businessman cannot do business in India if he doesn’t know the law. I can recite the entire Indian Contract Act verbatim now.” The 67-year-old entrepreneur was in Delhi to attend a high court hearing in a case he had filed against the Central Organisation for Railway Electrification (CORE). They had cancelled a railway electrification contract worth Rs 49 crore with his company after just nine months without even giving his firm a hearing. CORE has denied these statements, saying they were factually incorrect and claimed that both notices—of seven days and 48 hours—were given.