The Kaipullai@thekaipullai
If you are wondering why India is not able to compete with China / Vietnam in Manufacturing, here is a gist.
If you are a brave Indian who decides to start an MSME or a Manufacturing company or a factory
1. A Municipal clerk / officer can reject your land registration file because of a missing annexure on the 16th page of the 17th form
2. A clerk from the GST office could misplace your online GST Certificate application.
3. Your GST Application could be marked for physical verification despite digital Aadhar verification, because your Insta photo and Aadhar card photo, doesn’t match
4. A GST officer can reject your application and force you to start over, because you committed the cardinal offence of not being in office at 7:30 PM when the Good God McLord GST Officer visited without any warning.
5. The Tehsildar can reject your application for using your own land for your own company, citing some obscure provision which was written in annexure 578 of the Factories Act 1948
6. Their superior district officer can send you a stop work notice, under some random act which was passed in 1869
7. The Salt Commissioner's office (There actually is such a department) can send you a notice for misuse of salt pan land, despite your land being 600 kms from the nearest sea.
8. The Environment ministry can send you a notice for cutting a tree that wasn’t there.
9. The Agricultural department can send you a notice for illegal conversion of Farmland to industrial use, despite the land being barren since 1857.
10. Customs can withhold your manufacturing machinery citing wrongful declaration and impose a 600% penalty for its release.
11. Power department can refuse you a connection citing a missing signature on Pg 301 of your commercial power application form.
12. The Water Department can stall your water connection because they have run out of smart meters - This is Digital India you see.
13. State Pollution control board can impose a penalty for toxic effluence, despite your factory being idle and having no effluents
14. A no name, random, Local Political Party can stop work at your factory because they want 120% reservation for local people
15. A different no name, random Local political party can destroy your factory because you didn't give prominence to local language on the name board. We cannot tolerate Language imposition, you see.
16. The Factory opening can be indefinitely delayed, because the local councilor / MLA / MP is too busy for inauguration
17. The Import Export department can block your export license and classify you as an international smuggler because you put a wrong comma in Page 354, Annexure 45, para 6. This, while the real international smugglers, happily smuggle.
18. RBI can Freeze your bank account, for some FERA / TERA / MERA violation of $1.08
19. You can receive a random Penalty, and a stop-work notice from a department, that you didn’t know existed
20. The Legal Metrology Department can block your production, because your 1 Kg is not equal to their 1KG
21. The GST department can send you a Notice for wrongful GST interpretation, an interpretation that you ironically fixed with consultation from the same GST Department.
22. They can impose additional GST retrospectively and just for kicks, put a 1200% penalty on top of it. And freeze your bank account if you don’t pay in 7 days.
23. A random disgruntled local guy, probably paid off by someone, can shut you down by filing a petition in district court for "health hazards”
24. CBDT can freeze your bank account due to non-payment of taxes, despite the factory not earning a single rupee of revenue.
25. The local municipality can suddenly decide to re-dig and re-concretize the already dug up concrete road, which is in front of your factory.
That’s why most aspiring entrepreneurs quit and go back home wondering if they should have simply stuck to a normal salaried job.
And few of the great souls who persevere, they spend most of their time and energy fighting the Indian govt machinery on compliance.
Not China / Vietnam on cost and quality.
