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I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India (2020)

• deleted 4y ago
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• gw99 4y ago
  Amazing you can apparently start a scam call centre with less administrative effort …
• ssivark 4y ago
  (from August 2020, FWIW) I wonder what it would take to digitize this whole process, so that a single application can trigger all the relevant approval requests, and the overall status can be tracked -- both by the applicant, and at the systemic level to see whether certain departments become (cough) bottlenecks.
  • newyankee 4y ago
    The biggest bottleneck is the power sharing between Central, State and local Govts with the judiciary acting as its own entity sometimes. By design a lot of entities would not want to cede power and control. This has been happening with the implementation of Goods and Service Tax (GST) in India which was considered politically unfeasible as recently as 10 years back
• newyankee 4y ago
  I tried buying some land but it was very difficult to get some agri land without significant cash in the area i was looking for. Paperwork is never perfect, but to make it acceptable you need to feed the right people.
• anovikov 4y ago
  If building something on agricultural land is hard, it is good: it is called agricultural for a reason. Maybe buying a parcel of industrial or commercial land would have ended up cheaper?
  • rohan_shah 4y ago
    Author of the article here: All the land in India is agricultural by default. Except in some desert states.
    • newyankee 4y ago
      Fellow Pune resident here. I think there is a potential for a transparency startup here. Parts of stuff like these exist. I would buy you lunch/ beer/ whatever to learn from some of your experiences.
      • rohan_shah 4y ago
        I'm building a startup for solving this. Let's meet. Twitter DM @ mrohanshah
    • kumarvvr 4y ago
      Really? Lots of land parcels are identified as Non-agricultural.
      • RxVhmD5v 4y ago
        Yeah. His motivations seem a bit suspicious. Is he so ignorant to claim all land in India is agricultural land.
        • programmer_dude 4y ago
          Sure it's not 100% but more like 50.4%.
      • programmer_dude 4y ago
        Guess which country has the most arable land in the world?
    • godelmachine 4y ago
      Hey author, this is OP. Thanks for documenting your ordeal.
• deleted 4y ago
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• giva 4y ago
  > Yes, you need to obtain “permission” before you build any manufacturing structure on your own land with your own money. This permission is called the NA or Non-Agricultural Certificate. Well, I though it was this way everywhere in the world. In Europe, at least, you cannot build anything on agricultural land unless it is a n agricultural structure or you get the classification changed, which is not easy.
  • newyankee 4y ago
    Everything is right in theory. This article is about how difficult it is for a small entrepreneur, you essentially need big pockets and right connections to start something even very small. All this does is creates a set of entrenched local businesses which run hand-in-hand very transparently with local political interests. This is the whole reason Western folks never understand why China succeeded so fast, it is because they made the trade-offs necessary for growth. For rapid growth you cannot make everyone happy right away. The good thing about India is that e-Governance initiatives have at least provided some transparency and understanding for the average person which did not exist before.
    • giva 4y ago
      Had this article been the difficulties to build a manufacturing plan on an area reserved for industrial use, I would agree. But I don't believe that changing the destination of agricultural land has to be a fast and easy process.
      • postingawayonhn 4y ago
        It should be fast and easy, but not necessarily guaranteed. You should be able to get a decision quickly regardless of whether it's 'yes' or 'no'.
  • arlcode 4y ago
    The idea itself is sound and reasonable. If you let people built wherever you'll find yourself out of arable land in an instant. What seems overly complex and inefficient is the amount of permissions and the subpermissions. Even to my German bueorcracy adjusted ears this sounds like a great way to extract bribes and fees. At least the process here is quite clear (but not always fast)
• ssmw 4y ago
  This person forgot to pay the right people.
• spaceman_2020 4y ago
  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 your company stamp. The company stamp can be made by anyone for $1-2. It has no bearing on security at all. Yet, you need to carry it with you if you want to get anything done. It's utterly baffling. I can access my corporate bank account online and make any number of transactions, yet if I want to apply for a debit card, I need my company stamp and signatures from all directors. Why? I have no idea!
  • etaioinshrdlu 4y ago
    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.
    • deleted 4y ago
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    • rqtwteye 4y ago
      I would replace “countries” with “systems”. You can see this in the US with government contracting or health billing. Tons of paperwork but totally opaque and prone to corruption.
    • systemvoltage 4y ago
      This has nothing to do with physical paperwork (See Japan which runs on paper forms even today; most hospitals in US are paperless but they're far from efficient), but the underlying policies that dictate the requirements and how the approval process must be conducted, number of parties/agencies/teams involved and the incentives put in place to make sure it gets done within a certain timeframe (QA controls). Some governments are better than others. Paperwork really isn't to blame here because even if everything was digital, the people behind the operation and the policies that govern their behavior is still the same. The problem isn't the interface between citizens and the government, it is the backend source code of the government. You are all barking at the wrong tree.
• iKevinShah 4y ago
  While this post is specifically about a manufacturing unit and usually will involve land, acquisition (if not already), NOCs (as shown in the post). This is standard and can / should / would be done digitally in near future, once all the units and officials have the awareness. To offer an alternative, starting business in India is extremely easy (at least Software Business), People have been running a business, filing GST, owning trademarks without leaving their apartment - Thanks to online services which ease these things. But yes, things are still difficult for manufacturing and land related things (and I assume it would be similar in other parts of the world, granted not so difficult).
• pseudo0 4y ago
  It seems like the problem is that the author has a moral objection to paying bribes in an area where bribery is customary: > Obviously, they are playing “hard to get” to get me to pay some bribe and initiate the process. But after going through all this, I am not going to pay any bribe to anyone. And: > And they openly demanded bribes after waiting for four months. > So the Gram Panchayat NOC is stuck because of non payment of bribe.
  • agileAlligator 4y ago
    > It seems like the problem is that the author has a moral objection to paying bribes Duh?
    • sonthonax 4y ago
      There’s a distinction to be made between a small customary bribe to an seriously underpaid state employee, and a larcenous bribe to a high official.
      • JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > a distinction to be made between a small customary bribe to an seriously underpaid state employee, and a larcenous bribe to a high official Not really. If normalized, it's part of their expected compensation package. Practically speaking, I think I'd suck it up and pay the bribe in the author's position. But I'd know I was doing wrong.
        • LeanderK 4y ago
          > If normalized, it's part of their expected compensation package. But it already is normalised. I think this is morally difficult because it is customary, expected and if you refuse you will not get anything done but also won't change anything. So what have you gained? I don't think you can fight corruption this way, you just can't do it alone.
          • deleted 4y ago
• fareesh 4y ago
  Missing was the grease to turn the wheels of bureaucracy
• throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
  this reads like the main quest from a RPG
• trustingtrust 4y ago
  As someone who lives in Maharashtra and I am close with people in manufacturing I can confirm that the corruption and mafia here is on a different level. You can’t get anything done unless you know people and are willing to bribe at every step.
• agileAlligator 4y ago
  As soon as I read the title, I knew the article would be pure pain.
• qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
  The time spend is the request for a bribe.. waiting 8h at a checkpoint or the local police station is the punishment for not paying up.
• dr_dshiv 4y ago
  I liked this article… but… it’s agricultural land. You can’t buy agricultural land unless you are a farmer and you can’t build non-ag buildings on ag land. This is a national food security issue. This is common in many countries.
• sam_goody 4y ago
  I do not understand the authors issue with paying bribes. You want your factory, you are willing to pay lots of money for it, and the system works with bribes. Fine, so be it. Pay the bribes and get to work. I once lived in such a country*. The unfairness is built in, but if you have the money, you can get whatever you need relatively quickly. If you are trying to save money, fine. But you are willing to go to court, which is even more expensive. And all that time wasted you could have been earning revenue. So instead, pay the bribes, start the company, get workers and build clout, and have the power to make change! * Said country has made huge strides to combat this and become legit in the past 30 years, and that has made everyone more wealthy - even those employees that can no longer collect bribes.
  • plaguepilled 4y ago
    >"I do not understand the authors issue with paying bribes." Because... Its extremely unethical and facilitates corruption?
    • sam_goody 4y ago
      OK, accepted. Like everything in life, there is always a trade off. We have a see-saw. One side has indignation, encouraging corruption at the level of one bribe, cost. The other side has time, factory, jobs, and possibly more influence to change the system. And from my experience, the people getting the bribe don't see it as unethical - it may even be their "salary". (Eg. Counselors don't get paid in many summer camps, they just get tips. Parents views the tips as extortion. Is it unethical to tip? No, but the whole system is corrupt and should be changed. /rant) Assuming that system is built this way (so the risk of paying the bribe is nominal), and you have the resources to pay it, it is the cost of doing business. It is unfortunate, but I do not understand why the cost is not worth it.
      • plaguepilled 4y ago
        This is an unfounded dichotomy. The implication that you cannot have an industrious society without a level of corruption is not supported by your argument (nor any I have heard of). Equitable working conditions make working more appealing to a worker - and this is extended to the "fairness" of your workplace. Tips are not "the cost of doing business", they are similarly an expectation passed down from authority to the workers to extract their wages opportunistically. People being accustomed to it does not mean that the issue is resolved, because it still leaves the financial risk in the hands of the worker should the business' profitability shift. And so bribes are similarly unethical. Moving on from the issue of bribes to the bribe receiver, they are also very obviously an imposition to the giver. Not further, they make the "true cost" of a transaction less clear to varying degrees, allowing a services cost to vary very highly compared to what the public might think it is. There is no good argument for a bribe.
• rockyj 4y ago
  I assume building a manufacturing on agricultural land will be hard, what about government designated "manufacturing / SEZ (special economic)" zones?
• captn3m0 4y ago
  Previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24106545 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24106545 (with a few comments from the author as well). The author had added a correction to the post (12th August 2020) stating that this was a mistake, and that the actual procedure was much less cumbersome: https://web.archive.org/web/20200812093618/https://superr.in/economy/i-tried-starting-a-manufacturing-unit-in-india/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200812093618/https://superr.in... > It has been bought to my attention that there was a mistake by an entry level employee. > So the Revenue Department itself was supposed to get all the NOCs required by going to all those offices, but an entry level employee forgot to add my file to the list of NA’s to be done. > [...] But PLEASE UNDERSTAND that “it was a mistake” in filing by an Entry Level Employee and normally this procedure takes less than 2 months and all the heavy lifting is done by the Revenue Department, Collector Office. Tweet from the author about the correction: https://twitter.com/mrohanshah/status/1293170591441104902 https://twitter.com/mrohanshah/status/1293170591441104902 But the correction was removed after a while, so maybe a bit of clarification will help.
  • rohan_shah 4y ago
    Hey! I'm the author and here's the clarification: That was the official response I got from the district administration so had to post it. Also was being pressured by the government (indirectly) to take it down. So that was all bs. Next update I'll give is when I will have solved the problem.
    • hionnode 4y ago
      So, it's still pending ?
      • _448 4y ago
        Here is Narayana Murthy, founder of Infosys, explaining the early days of Infosys :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IuqHUA2mQY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IuqHUA2mQY
        • 4y ago
• deleted 4y ago
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• egorfine 4y ago
  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.
  • aivisol 4y ago
    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...
    • orwin 4y ago
      Ukraine was really on a roll pre-war, regarding corruption, at least low-level. 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.
      • nikanj 4y ago
        There's an image in Ukraine (and the EU) that Russians are corrupted. Saying no to corruption is a form of saying "I'm different from Russians"
      • throwaway738585 4y ago
        I guess he meant the shift from government office offline visits to full digitalization. At the moment a lot of common operations and documents (e.g. register the company) in Ukraine can be done exclusively using the Internet, and if you try to visit a government office they will send you back to fill the forms via the website.
    • 4y ago
• jacknews 4y ago
  This seems like nothing to do with 'starting a business', but simply obtaining planning permission for changing land use. This is a notoriously difficult process in any developed nation, and is often even impossible, because the state has decided that a particular area should be dedicated to agriculture (the nation has to feed itself, etc).
• amadeuspagel 4y ago
  > Yes, you need to obtain “permission” before you build any manufacturing structure on your own land with your own money. Are there any countries where this isn't true? Where you can just build whatever you want on your own land with your own money?
• instagraham 4y ago
  India's claims to remove red tape since this government took over can best be summarised as "three red tapes in a trenchcoat"
• lbriner 4y ago
  There are two big problems with bureaucracy (apart from never knowing how to spell it). The first is that bureaucratic processes always seem to get bigger/longer/more complex and secondly, by its nature, it is hard to improve because the same bureaucracy you want to remove requires just as much effort to change as the effort you are trying to save. It would make more sense to time-limit some of these things and make the various departments reapply every 2 years if they think the process serves a purpose still. Perhaps they pay $1M as well. As soon as the cost is more than the benefit, all of a sudden we realise that we don't really need 100 differnt people to sign off on everything. Another easy win in this example would just be to make more of it electronic e.g. you apply in one place and they send out the relevant permissions to the various departments, some of whom could fill them in immediately/automatically and wire them back.
• klausjensen 4y ago
  ~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. I will not tire you with all the details, but to this day, Indian tax authorities still hold money hostage, that they agree my Indian company is owed (GST refunds). But all attempts to actually get the money back falls on deaf ears. 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... I will never do business in India again. Happy to work with Indian developers (I still do), but they will get paid as freelancers and deal with the red tape on their end.
  • m12k 4y ago
    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.
    • 19h 4y ago
      I would like to second this recommendation. We’ve been using remote.com and hiring internationally suddenly became very possible and we can’t be any more happy. Before this hiring internationally was a pure nightmare to the point that we simply didn’t accept international remote developers. Thanks Remote!
      • vwcx 4y ago
        And how has that shell set-up been for your international team members? In my experience, it added just enough of a layer of obscuration to perpetuate a caste system, similar to how full time temps and vendors are currently treated in tech. US FTE employees had full HR support while Indian subcontractors had really poor HR/payroll/benefits resources from Remote. YMMV
• rippercushions 4y ago
  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. https://osos.boi.go.th/One-Stop/home/ https://osos.boi.go.th/One-Stop/home/
• anshumankmr 4y ago
  Here'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.
  • kwere 4y ago
    and still it seems a lot of india fetishes socialism/commando economy USSR style. why?
    • deleted 4y ago
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    • triceratops 4y ago
      Is there any reason to believe it would be less corrupt with a different economic system? At least now there's plenty of subsidies for the poor.
    • dartharva 4y ago
      It's easier to move the masses with promises of freebies and subsidies than with better economics that are difficult to explain.
• akhilramolla 4y ago
  Try the signle window policy of Telangana. https://ipass.telangana.gov.in/about.aspx https://ipass.telangana.gov.in/about.aspx
  • kumarvvr 4y ago
    I am from Hyderabad. Can you share any success stories with this? I am very interested. Do you have any first hand knowledge or experience with this system?
  • moffkalast 4y ago
    Dhruvok and Jalammad at Telangana
  • nikanj 4y ago
    There is a single window, but it's only open on the third monday of every other month, and the person manning it is illiterate - unless you pay them a small fee to activate their reading skills.
• testemailfordg2 4y ago
  Not sure if political parties in India provide assistance in these cases, in return for electoral funding via completely legal and annonymous electoral bonds. This would be similar to lobbying in the west. But the question is for how much, they would be willing to help.
• kumarvvr 4y ago
  I am not sure about a manufacturing company, but I could start a "firm", in a matter of 1 week, to conduct business. Granted mine is a software development one and I created the business primarily for tax purposes. Looks like the author wants to use land demarcated for agricultural use to build a factory. That is a whole new story. In many cities, there are industrial development centers and you can buy land there and build a manufacturing facility easily.(The very fact that the govt. sold/leased you land in that zone means a lot of environmental and industrial clearances are de-facto fulfilled)
• zac23or 4y ago
  In Brazil we have a saying: The government makes it difficult to sell facilities.
• rish1_2 4y ago
  The right answer to most of this corruption is to create a system of check and balances with complete blinded information exchange between each check point so no one decision body is influenced by another. This is impossible to create because of vested interests and likely never happen.
  • rish1_2 4y ago
    America is closest to this but is not blinded so corruption still exists.
• chronicsonic 4y ago
  Formula 1 was racing there but pulled out due to tax issues that could not be resolved. https://edtimes.in/why-was-formula-1-racing-forced-out-of-india/ https://edtimes.in/why-was-formula-1-racing-forced-out-of-in...
• 100069912261242 4y ago
  Chiter
• twawaaay 4y ago
  You are doing it wrong. What they really wanted from you was a bribe, not a stack of papers. Nobody will ever openly admit they want a bribe. They will just drown you in bureaucracy until you get the idea.
  • moralestapia 4y ago
    "Oh, that's nice then" ... nope.
  • jefftk 4y ago
    My read is that the OP understands this but is ideologically opposed to paying bribes. Ex: "Obviously, they are playing 'hard to get' to get me to pay some bribe and initiate the process" and "So the Gram Panchayat NOC is stuck because of non payment of bribe".
    • twawaaay 4y ago
      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 to pay bribes. There is a lot of examples of large companies that came to the same conclusion. For example, Ikea tried to do business in Russia without paying bribes and gave up. They also decided they will not be supporting corruption but they failed, faced the choice to pay bribes or get out and decided to get out. India is corrupt to the bone. Corruption is way of life. It is a reason for people to get government jobs which otherwise do not pay enough. If government jobs do not pay enough and people self select themselves to get these jobs anyway only because they plan on getting bribes to supplement their salary, how prevalent corruption would be? This actually is the reason why fighting corruption is so hard. Because people self select themselves and displace those who do not accept corruption from those jobs. Then these officials advance and take up high level jobs and pretty soon you have entire structure corrupt to the bone at every level.
• aktuel 4y ago
  Not surprised. The amount of paperwork I had to fill out just as a tourist in India already boggled my mind. I had to fill out basically the same information three times over just between the airport and the hotel.
• DocTomoe 4y ago
  So India has a process for turning agricultural land to manufacturing land. Compare that to Europe, where such endeavours are often impossible completely (if you are a landowner), and quite easy (if you are a local government). We've had this guy [1] protest on TV lately. Sums it up well. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mnB5Q5Hay4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mnB5Q5Hay4 ... translated subtitles are decent. Money shot: "It's like that: We can't all sit with a MacBook in Berlin in a cafe, sipping on a chai latte and programming the tenth dating app. Sometimes, someone has to work with their hands."
• deleted 4y ago
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• dopidopHN 4y ago
  as someone else said, it looks like rezoning and that might be hard in many other place. For instance in France, you could be per-empted until late in the process by the SAFER, the entities managing agricultural land. They might buy it from the vendor at market price when you try to buy the land, and sell it for another price they see fit to a farmer of their choice. Not as frustrating as what OP described. Still. Simple Administrative formality can fuck up your plan badly. CF a fine piece of self reflection on our own adminstration. ( I love our admin, it's a fine piece of Napoleonic technology. But. yah. ) https://youtu.be/JtEkUmYecnk?t=34 https://youtu.be/JtEkUmYecnk?t=34
• clivefx 4y ago
  This is almost identical to the process of setting up a manufacturing facility here in the bay area. Difference is that you never do all this yourself. You use permit sherpas and general contractors to handle most of the paperwork. Source: done it three times
  • e-_pusher 4y ago
    Do you have any contacts you recommend for this process?
• ltbarcly3 4y ago
  Systems like this are set up to be almost impossible to get through because the higher the cost to go through the legitimate process the more likely you are to pay a bribe, and the higher that bribe will have to be.
• mindaslab 4y ago
  Unless you are willing to pay bribes and have the right contacts. Business in India is impossible.
• thunkshift1 4y ago
  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 setup a unit on land that I already have which allows this’. Note that agricultural land goes for a pittance compared to non na one. Author probably tried to pull a fast one onthe govt.
  • boole1854 4y ago
    > 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?
    • thunkshift1 4y ago
      Why dont you try building a residential property or factory on a land zoned for public parks and tell me how that goes in your country?
      • gautamcgoel 4y ago
        ...the author owns the land he is trying to build on, which is very different than trying to build something in the middle of a public park.
      • asdff 4y ago
        Most US cities as they exist today would not exist if you could not convert agricultural land to other uses. Where does suburbia come from? Former farms.
        • 4y ago
• conductr 4y ago
  > Obviously, they are playing “hard to get” to get me to pay some bribe and initiate the process. But after going through all this, I am not going to pay any bribe to anyone. Given "bribe" was mentioned 39 times in the article.. Good luck!
• deleted 4y ago
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• merely-unlikely 4y ago
  > Yes, you need to obtain “permission” before you build any manufacturing structure on your own land with your own money. > I understand the reasoning behind the need for a PWD NOC. What if they’re planning to build a road through the land on which we intend to do our construction. It’s certainly worth notifying the public works department before we do any construction activity. Seems strange to me that it is on you to check that the government isn't planning on building on the land you own.
• 1024core 4y ago
  I would highly recommend this book by Hernando DeSoto, The Mystery of Capital. GBooks link: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Mystery_of_Capital/ZKOal2aylpgC?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Mystery_of_Capital/...
• interdrift 4y ago
  What a pain man. Reminds me of setting up the visa for my spouse in Bulgaria (she's from Canada). The amount of mental pain I've experienced with administration should be illegal. This seems much worse and I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy.
• TheRealPomax 4y ago
  > Yes, you need to obtain “permission” before you build any manufacturing structure on your own land with your own money. I don't understand why this is phrased as incredulous. Are there countries where this isn't the case? Just because you own the land -which you don't, you merely have a title that grants you the exclusive, but limited, usage rights of that land- does not mean you are free to just build whatever you want? That said, Indian paperwork is famous for being Futurama levels of bureaucracy with Balkan levels of bribery. It's why giant corporations just don't bother with India, and why small store owners just don't even bother: just run your business until they crack down, which they won't as long as you keep a low profile.
  • yrgulation 4y ago
    > Balkan levels of bribery. Yeah think again.
    • TheRealPomax 4y ago
      think again because "there's no bribes in the balkan" (rural cops in the balkan will pull you over for literally nothing just to make you pay them to go away again) or "it's so much worse than the balkan" (I won't argue that one, it really is)
      • yrgulation 4y ago
        The latter. It may be bad in the balkans, which it is, but nowhere near as bad as in other places. Either way both regions will improve. If anything, i’d invest now even if i wouldnt be able to exploit that investment. Nationalism aside i think india has a bright future. The balkans will end up in the eu as well if the eu doesnt break up. Worth investing there too.
        • TheRealPomax 4y ago
          Investing and "opening a business" are two very different things though. I'd definitely invest in India (BRIC is about to loose China, but the rest are still improving year over year at a rate that looks sustainable), but I'm not mad enough to try to actually open a physical business there. It's kind of a well-known bureaucratic black hole in economics circles. The best you can hope for is to buy an existing company (whether that's outright buying, or "buying" through some contractual subsidiary/merger/etc. arrangement)
• AntiRemoteWork 4y ago
  Do not engage in any relationships with people from the "Global South" and Slavs. Simple rule for easy life.
• gumby 4y ago
  About a decade ago I did set up an entity in India which employed people. However I did it as a JV with a subgroup of one of the big dynastic families. They had to own 50%+1 share, I am a PIO so owned the rest. They had all the connections so setting things up was quick. Then we needed a factory so I visited a bunch of factories owned by the conglomerate. We picked one and they set aside some space to build our stuff. We didn't get soaked in that deal; I think that was because the factory wasn't really making much money and they figured the JV would throw off more cash. We also worked with some other suppliers; I visited them directly, negotiated terms, and only then brought in the big guns from our partner. I figured that would mean we'd get the best deal: either the special deal for a new customer or the special deal for one of the big guys, whichever was cheaper. The latter was always cheaper, but I always wondered: would that have been true had we not already negotiated a ceiling on the price? And in the end...the person assigned to be the CEO of the JV by the partner, a nice guy who seemed to work hard...embezzled most of the capital! But my big lessons were: 1 - work with a partner who already knows whose hand to shake and 2 - don't try to do anything new; modify an existing structure. In that, the latter case is similar to what apparently is the standard way to open a restaurant in America: don't rent an empty space and fit it out as a restaurant; instead take over the lease and permits from someone who went bankrupt doing that, and run your restaurant on their kitchen setup and permits.
• sagaro 4y ago
  Reading this, it doesn't seem like starting a manufacturing unit in India is difficult. But starting a manufacturing unit in an AGRICULTURE land meant for farming is difficult. The difficulty is not the manufacturing plant. It is the conversion of agriculture land to non agriculture land. I find the title and the conclusion by the author very misleading.
• ta20221029 4y ago
  This is so true, I started a digital business in 2014 and grew it until 2016. Then I had some personal emergency and slowed down for a bit. Then GST came, and I literally had to "beg" my existing chartered accountant "with folded hands" to take care of my GST filings - even after I would pay him anything he wanted. They were so overloaded with constant changes, bad portal, etc that my small work was "negligible". Over a period of 5-6 years, I brushed up with so much corruption that it sickens me to the core. I tried approaching the ACB(anti-corruption-bureau), and faced even more harassment. I believe their job is to protect corrupt officers who pay dues to their higher ups. And the supreme leaders are changing rules that are empowering such corrupt officers. If we talk about it to public - we are termed anti-nationals. I grew up with "real goons and mafia" when I was a kid, but even those guys had better ethics relative to what most govt officers exhibit today. In India, I used to have mild panic attacks when my mobile rang. I had sleepless nights and my work suffered so much. I left India with my business just recently and came to UAE (because it was the shortest path). The freedom from stress was so good that I slept like a baby for a few days. (And I am an Hindu for the record). The only worry I have here is higher cost of living which leaves less savings, but I make enough. I have so much invested in India that I want to sell off, but I do not want to go back even for a moment. I have extended family back there, but I don't want to see them. There are a few things I've realised over the past 20 years, and more so in the past 8 years. I may be wrong - but this is what I think, based on my own experiences: 1. GST is a HUGE RISK to any business in India. There are some businesses that actually benefit from GST - but they deal with "arbitrary ruling risk". Then there are other bureaucratic departments. India's GST was not successful in doing "one-nation-one-tax", but it became successful in bringing multiple levels of corruption and goonism together. 2. All taxation and govt departments are departments of white-collar greedy goons. No matter what people say about part of the system being corrupt. They are all corrupt goons because they work in unison. 3. Corruption in India is not like "some bad fish in water", but it is like a "glass of highly toxic liquid that has contaminated the container". Even if you put in multiple glasses of "clean water", the system stays "toxic" - you basically need to replace the container completely. And that really requires a big breaking change - which people of India will not support. 4. Indian govt officers (even the clerks) think of private Indian citizens as "slaves" and use divide-and-counquer policies. If we think India is a democracy, think again. The supreme "elected" leaders cannot do a lot, because they need them.
• pkphilip 4y ago
  One of the tricks that the income tax department uses is to "outsource" their work to regular tax payers. Companies are forced to check and see if their vendors are paying their taxes on time! https://cleartax.in/s/gst-vendor-compliance-report https://cleartax.in/s/gst-vendor-compliance-report This is an absolutely ridiculous demand to make. This is because of the very complicated way the GST structure works in India. The systems in India are designed to complicate life for the ordinary person
• htoiweri23423 4y ago
  Japan's colonialism in Manchukuo turned it into one of the largest industrialized economies in the world (and in many ways, more industrialized than Japan). British colonialism & its continued degeneration under Nehru's acolytes made sure that India would never ever rise again. What a tragedy. It's amusing that my countrymen consider the Indian state legitimate at all - it's only agenda seems to be the destruction of the classical Indian civilization, together with all its inheritence (language, tradition, 'religion' ...).