Yes. As piva00 said, the elite benefits from the status quo. I think it is something even deeper: people are deeply afraid of change. Another factor is the laz

Yes. As piva00 said, the elite benefits from the status quo. I think it is something even deeper: people are deeply afraid of change. Another factor is the laziness of the bureaucracy. Public servants prefer to move paper around than being "permissive by default" and going to the field to verify that things are ok. Yet another factor is the weak justice/control system. It is difficult to punish bad actors rapidly and effectively after the fact, so the government tries to do as many checks as possible before the fact, which of course doesn't work and makes the life of honest actors hell, but "at least we tried!". All that said, Brazil is probably much less bureaucratic than India. We Brazilians tend to compare with USA (big country as well, same continent, so natural comparison) but some friends that went to live in EU say bureaucracy is a big thing there too.