121–130 of 456 posts
India'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…
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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…
The video talk about Russian military handing out Million dollar contracts to companies registered weeks before the tender. Well, guess what, the exact same thing happened in UK for PPE contracts: "Within weeks of the company’s incorporation on 12 May 2020, PPE Medpro was awarded contracts worth £203m to supply millions of masks and gowns." https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/07/michelle-mo...
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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.
Is Japan the exception?
Just 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 b…
I had a friend who worked at Kyiv since 2014, first as a nightclub owner, then as a security contractor salesman/manager, and he told me that low-level corruption there was divided by two overnight (during Covid).
I don't know what happened, but i guess it is easier to pass harsher or society-changing laws during a pandemic.
India'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…
I was in Tunisia at the airport in Tunis for a departing flight. Having already checked online, I tried going through security with my electronic boarding pass. The security told me I needed my boarding pass. I pointed again to the electronic copy as politely as I could. The security said “this is Tunisia, you need the paper copy.” XD
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I wouldn't consider Germany and Switzerland that corrupt.
At least for Germany... we're not overtly corrupt: you don't need to bribe policemen to get out of fake charges or traffic stops, you don't need to bribe city officials for building permits. But at the large scale, we are absolutely a corrupt nation: our former Chancellor Schröder sold us out to Russia, there have been dozens of millions euros worth of (shockingly ruled legal) corruption during the pandemic, the larg…
Oh that new building code or electrical code just so happens to only be fulfilled by using the latest (patented) product by company X?
Well it's the state of the art, we can't build below that standard anymore.
India'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…
> the "company stamps" that are required for everything you do with your business We had that craze in Poland, but somehow managed to slowly crawl out of it over the last 20 years. It was a slow and painful process: even when the laws were changed not to require stamps, many places would ask for them and you would have to explain that your company stamp doesn't exist, so you can't place one on the form. It's one of t…
I suppose they mean to say "don't make a squiggly line (parafka) and call it a signature".
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What makes me pessimistic is the place bureaucrats still occupy in the social hierarchy. Even today, getting a government job carries tremendous prestige, especially outside urban areas. Becoming an IAS/IPS officer is the most prestigious thing you can do as an individual. Bureaucracy will remain obdurate as long as members of the bureaucracy are feted by society. Ideally, bureaucrats should be invisible. But in Indi…
> Becoming an IAS/IPS officer is the most prestigious thing you can do as an individual. If you are in UP and Bihar. That's not true for the rest of the country.