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I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India (2020)

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Re: I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India (2020)

#321

Post by TremendousJudge »

MikePlacid wrote: post #283
ricardobayes wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually kind of disturbing how there are basically only a handful of countries on the planet without systematic corruption. Maybe there are none. Perhaps it's a human trait.

> It's actually kind of disturbing how there are basically only a handful of countries on the planet without systematic corruption. Maybe there are none. Perhaps it's a human trait. More disturbing (to me) is how easy it is to eliminate corruption in any given area - without any brutality or anything else extraordinary. Just setup the process correctly, incentivize workforce - and the same people who were building ro…

>2. The clerk will be fired if he asked - not just for any unnecessary documents, but just for asking any legally unnecessary question.

>3. The clerk will be also fired if he accepts a registration that does not confirm to federal guidelines.

Fired by whom? Who is in charge of checking this? How do you ensure that the clerk isn't just accepting false businesses and giving a percentage to whoever's above? On its face this system doesn't seem to cure a culture of corruption to me

Re: I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India (2020)

#322

Post by TremendousJudge »

drran wrote: post #255
Lio wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be sceptical given just how greedy corrupt bureaucrats can be. There's not much to stop a crook being both officially well paid and totally corrupt.

Yes, but the position will be taken by a honest guy already.

Why?

Re: I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India (2020)

#323

Post by twawaaay »

jefftk wrote: post #316
twawaaay wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a choice. Try to do business in India and pay bribes or move your business elsewhere. There are countries of which India is one of them where you can't do any serious business without paying bribes. Serious business is anything where a government official even suspects you may have money to pay the bribe. So maybe not a hairdresser, but if you have money to buy a piece of land you are expected to have money…

> You have a choice. Try to do business in India and pay bribes or move your business elsewhere. This post and the OP's decisions seem to me to be part of an attempt to decrease corruption in India.

IMO it is just wasted effort. I applaud the person for trying to do right but unfortunately it will not achieve anything. For corruption to decrease you need government that is actively working to this end. Except Indian government is corrupt, too.

It isn't even going to prove any point or make the problem any more public. Because Indians are extremely well aware of the problem and they all know a lot of these stories from their own life.

Regular people will never get rid of corruption exactly because of the effect I mentioned -- because people self select themselves into government jobs. A government position is way more lucrative to a person that plans on being corrupt than to a person that plans to only live from the official salary.

It is like trying to explain to extremists (say Republican extremists, or nazi, or communist, etc.) why what they are doing is bad. You can reach individuals and even convince them to your point but then those individuals leave their extremist circles leaving those circles exactly as extremist as they were before.

Re: I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India (2020)

#324

Post by jefftk »

twawaaay wrote: post #323
jefftk wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have a choice. Try to do business in India and pay bribes or move your business elsewhere. This post and the OP's decisions seem to me to be part of an attempt to decrease corruption in India.

IMO it is just wasted effort. I applaud the person for trying to do right but unfortunately it will not achieve anything. For corruption to decrease you need government that is actively working to this end. Except Indian government is corrupt, too. It isn't even going to prove any point or make the problem any more public. Because Indians are extremely well aware of the problem and they all know a lot of these storie…

Maybe, but many people in India's government do want it to be a place people come to do business, and publicly embarrassing them with how hard it is to make progress without bribes seems plausibly helpful.

Re: I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India (2020)

#325

Post by radicaldreamer »

cafard wrote: post #267
soperj wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have sent experts to the relevant tax offices etc, but the ONLY guy who can handle it is never there, refuses to deal with it, then says we need to go somewhere else - where we are sent back etc etc. Sent around in circles, basically - with everybody recognizing the money is in fact owed... That sounds exactly like they're needing a bribe, but you're too rooted in western ways of doing things that you don't real…

US citizens bribing foreign officials can be convicted of a felony under (I think it is) The Foreign Corrupt Practices act. Whether DOJ chases down three-developer scale stuff, or has only the staff for multi-zillion class bribes, I don't know.

There have been many smaller companies charged with FPCA violations and even in cases where no charges were brought, the investigation cost the company enough to basically put it out of business.[0]

[0]: https://fcpablog.com/2017/05/24/hyperdynamics-another-fcpa-i...

Re: I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India (2020)

#326

Post by boole1854 »

thunkshift1 wrote: post #291

This is not an honest take on ‘ease of doing business in india’. What the author is trying to do is re-purpose his agricultural land for non agricultural use. For various socio-political reasons this is big no-no in many states in India and is known to be a very long winding and drawn out process because the govt does not want agricultural land to be re-purposed. I expected something along the lines of ‘I tried to se…

> Author probably tried to pull a fast one onthe govt.

In what sense is the author trying to pull a fast one? They own agricultural land. It is legal to convert agricultural-use land to non-agricultural-use land. There is a legal procedure for doing so. The author is trying to follow the procedure. The procedure turns out to be very difficult, and they publicize this fact. Where is the 'fast one' being pulled and who is it being pulled on?

Re: I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India (2020)

#327

Post by merely-unlikely »

giorgioz wrote: post #235
franciscop wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a funny story from Spain: My father's has an orange field, so at some point he wanted to dig a well to get some water. He went to the City Hall, got all the tricky paperwork and applied for permission to build it. Months passed by without hearing anything, and at some point he just forgot about it, assuming he'd be denied silently. There's some people in the city hall don't like him too much BTW. Few years lat…

don't ask permission, ask forgiveness

That sometimes backfires. My dad built a fence while the application was pending. The city approved the application but made him tear down the fence anyway and rebuild it since he didn't have permission when it was first built.

Re: I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India (2020)

#328

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #296
stefan_ wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying an official to do something they were going to do (eventually) anyway does not qualify as a bribe.

Jesus. Please no one take that as legal advice. Paying a bribe to get preferential treatment (even if that treatment is just to get the person to do their actual job) is a bribe none the less.

Paying an official to perform their job (perform a "routine governmental action") is a facilitating payment and is an exemption from the prohibitions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/78dd-1

The point with a facilitating payment is that you've done everything that's actually required by law to e.g. get a business license and the official is still giving you the run-around, you are allowed to pay them. It doesn't apply in cases that relate to paying decision makers for contracts, for example.

If you're thinking about doing this, you should absolutely consult a lawyer, but the post above is wrong on the general construction of the law.

Re: I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India (2020)

#329

Post by marcosdumay »

jkestner wrote: post #236
miroljub wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's what Bolsonaro did in Brazil. In his campaign, he demonstrated to be a good christian and a person of faith. In Brazil, people strongly associate that with being a good person. Wasn't Bolsonaro elected because the previous president and his main opponent (Lula?) was so corrupt that he even landed in jail, which is a rare event for a prominent politician? > Guess what happened after. Care to explain to non Br…

I don't know if Lula committed corruption, but he apparently wasn't more corrupt than the judge who tried him, who became Bolsonaro's Minister of Justice. All the charges were dismissed eventually because of court bias. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luiz_Inácio_Lula_da_Silva

Lula was condemned in 3 different courts. Not unanimously because the higher court judges disagreed about increasing his sentence by a small amount or a lrge amount.

Al the cases were dismissed because a new law was passed that created a new court and said every case like Lula's should be judged only on that new court.

Re: I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India (2020)

#330

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

ninju wrote: post #282
stefan_ wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying an official to do something they were going to do (eventually) anyway does not qualify as a bribe.

citation please :-) To me...if I have to pay someone to do their assigned job it seems like a bribe to me https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bribe (using money to affect the conduct of a person)

>citation please :-)

15 U.S. Code § 78dd–1(b)

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