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India's obsession with paperwork is unceasing and baffling. Everything requires an application, even when everything can be done digitally. You need letters and

• 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.
    • silasdavis 4y ago
      Paperwork and bureaucracy conducted face-to-face is completely different in its capacity for bribery, cronyism, and discriminatory behaviour outside of the official system. Automated systems can be quite awful (original research: Spain) but neither paper or digital systems would officially state the human factors involved in turning them over. There's simply less opportunity for these human factors in more automated digital systems.
      • usrusr 4y ago
        Particularly if you consider the on-ramp to corruption: being a little more lenient and helpful to those who are more polite than others blends into being a little more lenient and helpful to those who you consider "on your team" blends into blends into being a little more lenient and helpful to those who give favors in return blends into being a little more lenient and helpful to those who offer cash. Only then the artificial roadblocks begin. Fully developed corruption would likely find ways to continue after digitalization, but the ramp to get there would be so much less inviting.
    • wincy 4y ago
      During the pandemic I paid for a concierge care doctor and man it was the most convenient experience I’ve ever had with a medical provider. Cut out the insurance, he had a nurse and one office assistant and virtually no paperwork. Guy actually had brain power leftover to know who I was and what my situation was. I feel really bad for anyone wanting to become a doctor in this day and age, it seems absolutely grueling. I don’t know why anyone would go through all that trouble.
      • throwaway2037 4y ago
        Wow, please share more details. What city and what was the total cost compared to other options? I have heard this exists in very rich places in New York City, but it costs a pretty penny!
  • somat 4y ago
    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 a criminal, preying on their fellow man. A very unpleasant environment to live in. The best article on corruption I have seen.(if you have time for an hour long power point presentation ) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9i47sgi-V4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9i47sgi-V4
    • ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      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-mone-referred-company-for-ppe-contracts-five-days-before-it-was-incorporated https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/07/michelle-mo...
      • ricardobayes 4y ago
        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.
        • arlcode 4y ago
          Some types corruption are worse than others. With the typical Western "overpay for a modern tank/gun/piece of equipment by a factor of 2" style you still get a modern tank/gun/piece of equipment in the end. From what I heard, for example, in Russia you do that but then the quartermaster goes and sells half of your equipment off on the black market and the grunts sell off the other half and replace it with something much inferior. The first kind of corruption is bad and should be rooted out, but the second type is much more destructive as can be seen in Ukraine right now. Secrecy at all levels and for minor details, as well as "encouragement" from the highest levels of politics for this kind of theft are core ingredients.
  • napier 4y ago
    Absolutely. Also, in paperwork superpowers, oftentimes the only ways to get things done are by resorting to what global consensus evaluative norms view as corruption, and a significant form proportion of what goes on frankly is corruption of corruption of the parasitical criminal kind... but there's also a great deal of routing around dysfunctional nodes in the system with legitimate intent on all sides. Interpersonal networks and middlemen routers evolve over time into parallel tracks of shared understanding about how to achieve mundane process flows and solve problems when the official channels are broken.
  • megablast 4y ago
    Is Japan the exception?
    • Vibgyor5 4y ago
      Not really - Germany is equally infamous for its obsession with paperwork and bureaucracy (unlike India, Germany still used fax)
    • resonious 4y ago
      To my knowledge, Japan's Yakuza used to be highly involved with the government. That's basically just a rumor though. I don't have any details. The rumor also says that this is no longer really the case anymore.
      • deleted 4y ago
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      • throwaway2037 4y ago
        I cannot answer about the original rumor, but I can say in the last ten years there has been a dramatic (economic) fall for the Yakuza. Slowly, the Japan gov't has passed tighter and tighter domestic money laundering laws -- taxes, building / business permits, banking, etc. Many times I have been asked to sign a form stating no connection with "anti-social forces". The Japan gov't is putting the economic equivalent of the "sleeper hold" on Yakuza. You hardly see them now (in visibly obvious forms) except the dodgiest places. I never see anyone with a missing half their pinky finger. (Yes, it is real / weird / scary.)
    • deleted 4y ago
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    • ekianjo 4y ago
      Corruption at the government level is rampant in Japan
    • sn41 4y ago
      From my experience with both countries, surprisingly, Japan is more paperwork oriented than India. For some reason, they really want things in hard-copy, too. The difference, and it's a major one, is that paperwork does not slow the pace of work in Japan. Once papers are there, progress is usually instantaneous.
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  • pjmlp 4y ago
    I wouldn't consider Germany and Switzerland that corrupt.
    • DocTomoe 4y ago
      Oh, corruption still exist, but most people are too poor to play in that league. Compare that to "developing country corruption", where you can often ... ahem ... prematurely show your gratitude towards an official for as little as 20 bucks.
      • pjmlp 4y ago
        Sure, but it is another league, not like back home in Portugal, where everyone does everyone little "favours", you cannot even get into some hospitals without a little help.
        • throwaway2037 4y ago
          How many times are you going to copy-pasta this exact same comment? Quick search shows three times. Keep it up. Great work.
          • pjmlp 4y ago
            I care for the lazy readers that don't bother to read all comments, as means to find out why I made the top comment. Congratulations you aren't one of them.
    • ChuckNorris89 4y ago
      Switzerland is far less bureaucratic than Germany.
      • soco 4y ago
        There was a saying "if I look at myself I hate myself, if I compare myself I love myself"
      • 4y ago
  • Ironlikebike 4y ago
    Every new piece of paperwork that requires an additional face-to-face hand off or brings in a new entity provides another avenue for corruption to occur and a place for money to disappear. I've had employees (in Brazil) who don't ever claim reimbursement on personal expenses because if their paycheck varies too much their bank freezes their funds (in the name of preventing money laundering) and then the employee has to go to the bank and bribe someone to get the funds unfrozen. Just showing the cause for the variation in payroll doesn't cut it. As the employee puts it, every requirement to show up in front of an official for anything requires a bribe.
  • throwaway2037 4y ago
    How do explain doing business in Japan and Korea? They are famous for stamps, applications, and exceedingly complex rules and regulations. Yet, there are relatively low corruption. I heard Germany and Austria are also very heavy on paperwork and bureaucracy. They essentially have zero obvious corruption. Corruption is a weird thing. Why do some countries have more of it than others -- holding GDP per capita constant? I cannot explain it. Look at the United States -- "googols" of money spent to influence lawmakers. It cannot be healthy and looks like legalised bribery in comparison to other highly developed democracies.
  • slim 4y ago
    the corruption business is very similar to racket. the threat being making you lose indefinite amount of time (instead of violence). as a business you have deadlines and not meeting them would make you lose money. sometimes losing money can be deadly to the company, that's why people unwillingly participate in corruption. the business model of corruption is : 1- slow the process as much as you can 2- some people will have deadlines and will be willing to pay to meet them 3- profit the slowness is there on purpose, to be able to provide quick process as a paid service
  • phonon 4y ago
    Japan being a notable exception.
    • mrkstu 4y ago
      No, it's there. Look at the scandal around the assassination of Abe and the Unification Church. The church has had the main party of Japan bought and paid for for decades.
  • stubish 4y ago
    If you have lots of paperwork, it means you are dealing with lots of different departments so lots more chances of encountering corruption. In the article, the author needs to chase dozens of different bits of paperwork. Quite a few there were no problem. But quite a few incompetent, corrupt, or both. Now, how about a system where you submit one application in one place, and if other departments need to know or collect fees or approve it is the responsibility of the submission point to pay or collect approvals? One desk is held responsible.
• 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
  dude. unless you are doing some space age shit or something, you don't need to set up a company in india to do business. sure the whole "limited liability" and that but in reality that is just a smokescreen. just use your personal pan card to open a bank account, get a GST registration, do income tax audit and you will be done. No compliance, no nothing. i do taxes and books for businesses with 250+ Crore turnover and they are all sole proprietorships. Why? the simple answer is why bother? you can have all the employees,all the corporate hierarchy and still be a proprietorship... One part of the problem is all the professionals milking companies for "compliance management fees" but in the end of the day, my suggestion to businesses is unless you REALLY REALLY need a company, please don't bother
  • roguesherlock 4y ago
    isn't the tax burden for sole proprietorship higher than for say limited company? 30 vs 25 iirc?
    • 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
      you can claim as many expenses as you like, in companies there are restrictions, there are deferred tax assets and liabilities because of companies act and income tax act depreciation difference. There is MAT applicable sooner than sole proprietorship i think. lets just say it is easier to "appropriate" the books as a sole proprietorship. you have to pay mca fees for your authorized capital, one off but if you are doing serious business, it costs. i know, 5% "might" sound a lot in taxes but by fudging some numbers, by not paying complaince fees, by not being on the hook for a "lot of compliance" and the penalties that come up, it does not sound worth the risk.... Look, if you are doing big business, want to raise money from the public, sure go ahead but not otherwise.
      • andsoitis 4y ago
        > but by fudging some numbers And this is the corruption mentality right there.
  • JumpCrisscross 4y ago
• rqtwteye 4y ago
  I remember buying a train ticket in Goa. This involved showing the passport and filling out multiple forms. It was pretty crazy.
  • hef19898 4y ago
    That reminds of a story about an Indian couple travelling Europe. SO, obviously, within the Schengen countries you do not need additional visas, something foreign to said couple. So, they crossed Eu border by train and ended up in another country. Confused over what to do next, they talked to the next police officer they found, because the couple was sure they couldn't just continue their journey without any further control. Explanations didn't work, so the easy solution was to use an official looking, but totally irrelevant, stamp to put on the back of their train tickets (in order to not cause confusion with the tickets or official passports). Source: I know the police officer in question.
    • stubish 4y ago
      How things have changed. Maybe 30 years ago I got stuck in Gibraltar for a few days having returned by ferry from Morocco, because the airport was closed due to weather. No problem for most, as they just bus passengers to the bigger airport in Spain. But a problem for us, because we had run out of entries on our Schengen States visa. It also used to catch a lot of people out on the trains, with people not realizing their passports would be checked mid journey when crossing the borders.
  • throwaway2037 4y ago
    Real question: What year? I notice there are lot of stories online about "20 years this crazy thing happened to me in India", but now no more. Example: You can do eVisa for India travel. Super easy online. Most train tickets you can buy online or via "concierge" (minor fee). Hotel booking? Yeah, that too, even smaller places via Internet "aggregator" websites. Travel in India is not so backwards as people think! I think the funniest and most embarassing story I have about travel in India: The first day in downtown Mumbai, I go to the train stain to buy a ticket for a Churchgate station a few stops away. Honestly, I have no idea what the price will be, but I assume 20-30 rupees. I only have 100 rupee notes. I go to the ticket window: Lady tells me: "5 rupees". I gasped, and looked at my 100 rupee note. She rejects my 100 rupee note! (She was not disrespectful; said: you will take all my change! Wait here; after next person, I can sell it to you.) Next person pays with enough change, then me. All good. We both laughed. To put that in perspective, that is about 2-3 Euro CENTS to ride the train!
• eunos 4y ago
  >Why? I have no idea! Legacy of British civil service and bureaucracy ?
  • Alkim 4y ago
    ...and an effectively unlimited labour supply
  • automatic6131 4y ago
    "No, you don't understand, we have to operate like this seventy plus years after the end of British rule - not because we are incapable or we aren't agents - no no but because the British set up this system, and who are we to change it?" See also, "no you don't understand, we had to start a war with the Muslims in the West because the British didn't tell them to be our second class citizens fast enough"
    • usrusr 4y ago
      A bureaucratic system selects for people who are good at that kind of process. Unsurprisingly, they aren't too eager to change the environment they thrive in.
    • eunos 4y ago
      Indian civil service do have stronger gravitas compared to other civil service. Looking from Indian Civil Services Examination, it really attracts huge amount of talents and required preparations.
• protomolecule 4y ago
  We had company stamps and sole proprietor's stamps in Russia too but they became optional 7 years ago. It was Soviet legacy and it's surprising that India still hasn't got rid of it.
  • unmole 4y ago
    India got rid of it in 2015.
  • cameronh90 4y ago
    Singapore still has company stamps.
    • throwaway2037 4y ago
      I guess it is a legacy of (inherited?) Chinese bureaucracy. Hong Kong has it too.
• srmarm 4y ago
  I remember dropping my bag at a luggage store at the big train station in Mumbai. Bags needed to be scanned before being stored, not uncommon. Except the scanner was on the other side of the station. So I was sent off and queued up to get my bag scanned and more importantly get my receipt stamped to say it'd been scanned walked back through the crowds where I could have done anything with the bag - to the luggage drop where the attendant checked that I had the correct stamps to say it had been checked! No seals on the bag, nothing to stop me giving them a different bag, just the essential stamp on a bit of paper!
  • raverbashing 4y ago
    Ah yes, it's the "yessir" bureaucracy, the "magical piece of paper" bureaucracy. Designed to keep privileges and maybe as a job program
  • spaceman_2020 4y ago
    Malls are the worst when it comes to security theater. Most will check your car's boot for illicit materials when you park. But they won't check the car's interios - you could have anything inside! You'll usually be frisked at the mall entrance. Women will only get frisked by a female security guard. If the female security guard is absent (pretty common), any female visitor can just walk through without getting frisked.
    • Tryk 4y ago
      Do you mean shopping malls?
      • trendroid 4y ago
        Not op but yes they meant that.
    • markdown 4y ago
      Wait, everyone gets frisked at Indian malls? Was certainly not my experience 20 years ago.
• jwr 4y ago
  > 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 those bureaucratic viruses of the mind. We're lucky to have gotten rid of it, but there are others! Examples are "fill your forms with a BLUE pen" (supposedly because it looks less "photocopied"?), "sign legibly" (I never know if I'm supposed to use my signature or sign my name), "your national ID card number" (it's idiotic to ask for one, as it changes if you lose your ID and get a new one). There was also a period where every company would photocopy your ID (for example when signing up for a cellular plan), until the government stepped in and declared it illegal. Bureaucracy is like barnacles on a ship: you have to constantly fight the growth.
  • Kwpolska 4y ago
    > "sign legibly" (I never know if I'm supposed to use my signature or sign my name) I suppose they mean to say "don't make a squiggly line (parafka) and call it a signature".
  • spaceman_2020 4y ago
    We had waived off the requirements for stamps and signs when filing annual compliance documents during the pandemic. Everything worked just as well. Now they've brought them back again.
• callamdelaney 4y ago
  With so many people pointless busywork is a good way to keep people busy and 'employed'.
  • htoiweri23423 4y ago
• signal11 4y ago
  > Everything requires an application, even when everything can be done digitally. Please also provide two self attested photocopies. (It’s interesting to think about why attestation is required.)
  • spaceman_2020 4y ago
    Now they ask for "official Aadhar". Even though its a digital document and Aadhar website explicitly states that every copy of Aadhar is an "official" copy. If you get a color print and get it laminated, your unofficial Aadhar suddenly becomes "official". I've had so many arguments with officials about this its unreal.
    • sundarurfriend 4y ago
      Huh, is that a thing people ask for? I've had to explain the > its a digital document and Aadhar website explicitly states that every copy of Aadhar is an "official" copy part multiple times to people in my family, but had assumed this would be basic knowledge to government officials.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• ryandrake 4y ago
  Reminds me of a surreal example[1] of Indian bureaucracy from Jim Rogers’ Adventure Capitalist: Rogers and his wife had left India's State of Manipur and were safely across the border in Myanmar. But wait, here comes an Indian official running after them, who says that they can't leave, because, they didn't have permission to be in Manipur. "He was telling us — I am not making this up — that we had to return to Manipur, because we were not allowed to be in Manipur, and thus we could not leave it," Rogers relates. The debate lasted for two hours before, "someone made a phone call and took the subinspector off the hook, and we were free to proceed." 1: https://mises.org/library/book-review-adventure-capitalist https://mises.org/library/book-review-adventure-capitalist
  • hef19898 4y ago
    India is the only place I ever travelled to, that controlled visas upon leaving the country. Like what, you are at the airport, behind security, with a ticket back to Germany in hand, with a German passport, and now they have doubts about the visas you got from the Indian consulate? What are they going to do, hold you up and send you back on a flight paid for by the Indian government or what? Really crazy. Overall, kind of logic so, because how can you leave a place you didn't enter in the first place because you had no permit to enter it? Mind blowing!
    • overstay 4y ago
      This is not that unusual. It happens to me every time I forget to hand over my Dutch residence permit with my (non-EU) passport when leaving the Schengen zone from Schiphol. The border guards are absolutely meticulous about flipping through the passport looking at the entry and exit dates in the hopes of catching a potential overstayer. They're almost always super disappointed when I realize what's happening and hand over the card. The threat isn't "we're going to keep you here because you weren't allowed to be here," it's "we see you have overstayed your visa and now we're going to make sure you catch your flight out and ban you from ever coming back."
      • stubish 4y ago
• devoutsalsa 4y ago
  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
  • ricardobayes 4y ago
    Is smoking still allowed there indoors (in the airport)?
    • devoutsalsa 4y ago
      Not sure, I didn't notice. A lot of airports have a designated smoking room, but I think you're asking about smoking in general.
      • ricardobayes 4y ago
        It's probably banned then since. A few years ago people were lighting up cigarettes in the lobby, which was very odd to me.
  • eitally 4y ago
    This happened to me in Mumbai several years ago. I had thankfully been forewarned, but there were military police checking boarding passes for entering passengers outside the airport, and no one without a paper boarding pass + appropriate government ID was allowed into the terminal. This was right up there with the "requirement" that business travelers in India provide a physical business card to the hotel when checking in. I haven't been a in few years, so hopefully that's at least no longer the case.
    • throwaway2037 4y ago
      What year? I cannot believe this was in the last 20 years. The "physical business card" thing never happened to me.
• vishnugupta 4y ago
  Worth noting that a vast majority of these rules were created by the British and have been carried over as it is post independence and till this day. Quite a lot of them have become irrelevant but no one’s bothered to purge them.
• swooni 4y ago
  A company stamp isn't a security device any more than a signature. It's an abstraction similar to a "power of attorney" type thing. They are going away but has been used in Japan and China, including Hong Kong, as well.
• newsclues 4y ago
  The results of British and east India company influences?
• Seanambers 4y ago
  In India they optimize for maximum employment. It's the only place I've seen 7 people needed to refill a soda vending machine. Once I ordered some drinks brought up to my hotel room around 10 in the evening. It took forever - turned out the guy who made the drinks was sent home for the day. So the hotel called him back and had him return just so he could come and make the drinks and bring them to my room. Because that was his job - nobody elses. This was at a five star hotel in Amritsar. Our driver slept in the car outside the hotel and was on call 24/7 for our entire stay. Quite different from western countries for sure.
  • CPUstring 4y ago
    I'm not sure that is maximizing employment as much as it is taking advantage of labor that is too cheap to meter.
  • throwaway2037 4y ago
    Weird question: Did you feel embarassed when you learned driver was sleeping in the car? I would be. You: Sleeping in a 5 star. Them: In an uncomfortable car seat. When I traveled to Seam Reap, Cambodia, I was constantly embarassed when my driver did not come to eat with me. It was a weird, unpleasant peasant-ruler divide that I did not enjoy.
    • howinteresting 4y ago
      Unfortunately, in rich countries, the peasant-ruler divide is just abstracted away and out of sight, often internationally.
    • mradek 4y ago
      Honestly this kind of stuff is why I don’t travel to such places. Im sure they’re beautiful and whatever but I’d rather go spend time in an advanced country like Japan. The constant guilt tripping is not fun.
    • Seanambers 4y ago
      I was attending a wedding and everything was arranged for me so i just 'arrived' as a white westerener. Yes it was strange, and it exposed me to something I had never before experienced or imagined. Wherever I went they would yell 'gora' meaning white man. Some even wanted to take my picture. However, Amritsar is famous for the golden temple which is the the holiest of all Sikh shrines. They said it was most beautiful to view at night. So we went there late at night parking closeby , walking there there we passed by the rickshaw drivers sleeping in their rickshaws as far as i could gather they had no other place to sleep. So they had it even worse. Not to mention the child beggars of New delhi or the makeshift camps you saw driving along the highway. All of this was approx 10 years ago. It for sure opened my eye to the destitute and poverty.
• 1024core 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. I remember once my wife and I wanted to travel by train to a tourist town. After buying the tickets, we realized we had made a mistake (actually, _they_ had made a mistake). So we decided to cancel our tickets and just buy new ones. We had to fill in an application, attach photos of ourselves, as well as our copies of our passports ... all to cancel a ticket! Boggles the mind. It feels like a Kabuki theater, set up to keep the people busy and employed.