This kind of ridiculousness is why governments serious about attracting enterprise have "one stop shops" for sorting out the paperwork. Here's the one for Thailand, which is hardly a paragon of governmental efficiency, but is a lot friendlier to small businesses than India.
I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India (2020)
111–120 of 456 posts
Re: I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India (2020)
#112Just like in my country, Ukraine. However during the last years Ukraine is getting rid of corruption at an escape velocity and hopefully at that speed we will be able to be done with it within ten years or so.
I like your optimism... I am writing from a country which joined EU few decades ago and hoped to rid the corruption as well. Now here we are: I have applied for permission to connect a house to a water line in a small town - that was in early June: and it still drags on. Despite all fancy online application and project tracking tools the government has built, the number of involved institutions is insane. And its a bloody water pipe some 50m long at most... Cannot imagine something larger...
Re: I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India (2020)
#113India's obsession with paperwork is unceasing and baffling. Everything requires an application, even when everything can be done digitally. You need letters and stamps to get anything done. Case in point: the "company stamps" that are required for everything you do with your business. From getting a debit card to changing the maturity instructions for a corporate deposit, you need to sign your name AND stamp it with…
Worth noting that a vast majority of these rules were created by the British and have been carried over as it is post independence and till this day. Quite a lot of them have become irrelevant but no one’s bothered to purge them.
Re: I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India (2020)
#114Here's some interesting things that I believe are universally true in India:
1) People succeed here inspite of the government, not cause of it.*
2) Indians can be successful anywhere except India.
*Unless you are rich enough to bend the laws to your needs.
Re: I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India (2020)
#115India's obsession with paperwork is unceasing and baffling. Everything requires an application, even when everything can be done digitally. You need letters and stamps to get anything done. Case in point: the "company stamps" that are required for everything you do with your business. From getting a debit card to changing the maturity instructions for a corporate deposit, you need to sign your name AND stamp it with…
A company stamp isn't a security device any more than a signature. It's an abstraction similar to a "power of attorney" type thing. They are going away but has been used in Japan and China, including Hong Kong, as well.
Re: I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India (2020)
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
The paperwork is an attempt(usually misguided) to stop the corruption. The idea is that if you have to account and document all actions you will have act in the proscribed manner and not in a way that benefits you. This usually fails for the reason you posted. I am not really sure how you are supposed to stop corruption once it gets rooted in your society. It is a vile and subversive menace that turns every one into…
> I am not really sure how you are supposed to stop corruption once it gets rooted in your society. Well, assuming that all people are roughly the same as each other, the answer would be to adopt traditions and systems from countries that aren't corrupt. Attempt the sisyphean task of convincing people that giving power to the middle class is going to lead to a better future. As your comment reveals, the instinct when…
incredibly naive answer from someone who probably haven't lived in a corrupt country and deal with the process on a daily basis.
Re: I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India (2020)
#117~5 years ago, I hired three Indian developers. They asked me if we could set up an Indian legal entity, so that they could just get regular salaries in India with tax payments, deductions etc taken care of. I agreed and we got it done. One of the worst business-decisions of my life. The amount of red tape, stupid rules, corruption, signatures, stamps, showing up physically in a certain office etc etc... Mindblowing.…
In the meantime companies like remote.com and similar have sprung up, providing "employer of record" services. Basically they let you outsource the act of having a company in a given country and employing people through it, much like how Stripe lets you outsource the whole merchant account thing for payments.
It seems that whenever there's red tape, there's a business opportunity in paving over it and providing a sane interface on top of it instead.
Re: I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India (2020)
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Countries with high paperwork and bureaucratic burden are famous for also being highly corrupt. This is probably not a coincidence. Likely all the excess paperwork makes it easier to hide what's really going on, easy to provide roadblocks for those who don't pay, and easier to generally hide bad activity in a sea of noise.
I wouldn't consider Germany and Switzerland that corrupt.
I have dealt with bureaucracy in Italy and in Switzerland and if you think Switzerland has bad bureaucracy, you have no idea what you're talking about.
Re: I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India (2020)
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't consider Germany and Switzerland that corrupt.
Ahem. We're talking about a country where a chancellor that pushed for building a gas pipeline from a foreign country went straight to the board of the foreign company running that pipeline after ending his term as chancellor. Corruption is everywhere, it's just on different levels. Usually in more "developed" (I don't like that word) countries you see corruption on the highest levels, and people actually get away wi…
The way you word it makes it sound like "the corruption in developing countries is low-level, whereas in developed countries it's high-level". In reality, the corruption in developing countries is on all levels, whereas it's mostly only happening at a higher level in developing countries.
Re: I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India (2020)
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't consider Germany and Switzerland that corrupt.
Ahem. We're talking about a country where a chancellor that pushed for building a gas pipeline from a foreign country went straight to the board of the foreign company running that pipeline after ending his term as chancellor. Corruption is everywhere, it's just on different levels. Usually in more "developed" (I don't like that word) countries you see corruption on the highest levels, and people actually get away wi…
in The US recently a commissioner at The FDA got offered a high exec position at Pfizer. Nobody says anything about that...