A Dust Over India

> For example to get a police verification certification, I had to pay no bribe in the police commissioners office.

> Generalizing individual experiences is never a good Idea.

Et tu :)

And no, neither me nor my family is anywhere close to being rich. My dad was a researcher in a govt owned research institute and I have no extraordinary streak of idealism.

It goes like this: they ask and I refuse and I observe what happens next. Usually it is not something that I cannot deal with. But a luxury it is not.

> And this is in Bangalore.

What did you expect! Among the different southern states I have been at, Karnataka seemed the most corrupt, but Bangalore takes the cake. For one thing there is more easy money floating around.

> Because by now corruption is a part of our lifestyle.

I would say travel more and refuse to give bribe as much as you can. It can get inconvenient (or even threatening depending on where you are), but its a matter of personal choice.

@ Kamal. Replying here: I am not making any moral judgement over your actions at all, for one thing I know how it goes in different parts of the country. The more people put up with some of the inconveniences more will the balance til in the right favour.

Imagine this: a policeman came in person from Lucknow to our dorm in Kanpur (the equivalent of coming from Dallas to Austin) hoping that he would a get a bribe from me for agreeing to OK my passport application. You should have seen the look on his face when I said no. I could say no because I had enough time to play with and wanted to see what happens next. Depending on circumstances I might not have had that luxury.

Screw idealism, I will do that just for that look on his face.

No, it's accurate.

What part of "when a state regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or special interests that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating" don't you understand?

That is the definition of "regulatory capture".

Note that regulatory capture is not "balancing the public interest with commercial realities" or similar such wording.

If you're perhaps debating some other term, please provide us with an accepted term and definition of same, rather than creating a Lewis Carrol "glory" (see: http://sabian.org/looking_glass6.php) and passing off as accepted wisdom.

On my planet, the appearance of impropriety is considered largely as bad as actual impropriety. Taking an example from a US government website: http://ig.navy.mil/Complaints/Complaints%20%20(Appearance%20...

If the revolving door consistently operates between regulatory agencies and the organizations those agencies regulate, then yes, I'd say that this comprises systemic corruption.

>>Serving companies interests vs serving public interests isn't a dichotomy

It actually is, many times. Especially when companies are ready to pay up any amount of bribe to get their job done.

To give you an example. A manufacturer can sell, low quality transformers to electric board. This is goes against public interests. But at the same the manufacturer can argue he creating jobs by running a company, so he can cheat.

>>If you're the president of a state energy board, you don't need to break any rules to get a higher paying job in industry.

Regular job income is chicken feed for these people compared to the money they make in bribes, commissions etc.

I usually like your illuminating comments about India, but here I think emotion got the better of you. There is no such sinister ploy or conspiracy (English or otherwise) going on here and neither is it unfair to claim that India has existed as many smaller kingdoms in its historical trajectory.

This is a very accurate portrayal of the hard parts of traveling as a backpacker in India. I'm not sure it's a totally accurate portrayal of India itself. I spent six months backpacking around India. A lot of what he said in the article resonated with me, especially eventually losing it about a few dollars with a taxi driver, hands shaking with anger over $4.

The thing the author doesn't mention is that being a traveler affects what you see and who you meet. There are places you go as a backpacker: Agra, Rajasthan, Bodhgaya, Goa, Bangalore and so on. And there are people there looking for you, expecting you, or at least someone like you. If you only speak to people who approach you, then you will meet a lot of dishonest people. Things tend to look pretty rough from the banana pancake store.

This is true in any poor country that gets a lot of wealthy tourists. Most of what he said was true in East Africa too. It's really true of anywhere you can get that damn banana pancake.

So, I don't disagree. It was spot on. But it's also possible that the 100% accurate description of what a backpacker sees in India is not an accurate description of India itself.

Also, I'm not advocating "getting off the beaten path" or trying to critique the "authenticity" of his "Indian experience". I hate that shit. But there is a bit of an Uncertainty Principle to backpacking. In my experience, you can't both travel a country cheaply and observe it objectively at the same time.