Currently it does need more scrutiny though. I have a few coworkers from India, they have tons of stories of how the corruption works there.
Get a traffic ticket, buy the cop a roadside lunch.
Want planning permission slide the civic clerk a bribe.
(Apparently that position has a long waiting list, because you will make more in bribes that a doctors salary.)
Injure or kill somebody in a motor accident, offer their family (and police) a lump sum to drop charges.
That’s pretty much anywhere in the third world, FYI. It’s just how things work until you have many decades of stability and democracy to unlearn it. Corruption used to be a way of life in the West, too. There were operas about it.
Corruption is still a way of life in the United States. But the bribes we pay to cops and regulators cost so much, only corporations and multi-millionaires can afford them. Corruption in the Third World is democratic; here, it’s a privilege of the rich.
India has 70 years of democracy, but according to my coworkers there are just too many people (density) to enforce laws. You shut something down, there’s another thing tomorrow
They have had democracy longer than typical, and are a challenge to explain in that sense, but not really stability or prosperity.
Whichever theory you subscribe to, this is an empirical observation. Visit Africa or Latin America or SE Asia and you’ll see similar things. (And the first two can be pretty low density, FWIW)
Currently it does need more scrutiny though. I have a few coworkers from India, they have tons of stories of how the corruption works there.
Get a traffic ticket, buy the cop a roadside lunch.
Want planning permission slide the civic clerk a bribe. (Apparently that position has a long waiting list, because you will make more in bribes that a doctors salary.)
Injure or kill somebody in a motor accident, offer their family (and police) a lump sum to drop charges.
That’s pretty much anywhere in the third world, FYI. It’s just how things work until you have many decades of stability and democracy to unlearn it. Corruption used to be a way of life in the West, too. There were operas about it.
Corruption is still a way of life in the United States. But the bribes we pay to cops and regulators cost so much, only corporations and multi-millionaires can afford them. Corruption in the Third World is democratic; here, it’s a privilege of the rich.
You clearly have no idea what it’s like outside the Western world.
(That’s a statement about your own privilege, not a criticism of them)
India has 70 years of democracy, but according to my coworkers there are just too many people (density) to enforce laws. You shut something down, there’s another thing tomorrow
They have had democracy longer than typical, and are a challenge to explain in that sense, but not really stability or prosperity.
Whichever theory you subscribe to, this is an empirical observation. Visit Africa or Latin America or SE Asia and you’ll see similar things. (And the first two can be pretty low density, FWIW)