At a recent CII seminar , Arvind Kejriwal said ,
" Not all
businessmen are corrupt. Quite a few are honest "
Having spent many years in Income Tax department he
ought to know that even when a businessman has maintained honest / truthful
books of accounts and not indulged in any mal-practice , he is still required
to bribe the concerned income tax officer , to get his tax return approved
A Chartered Accountant ( who specializes in filing tax
returns for companies ) , once told me :
" I have forgotten my accounting principles . I
have been reduced to being a broker between the income tax officers and my
client companies
If these tax officers get their ' percentage ' , they
could not care less as to how many sets of duplicate account books you
maintain !
Of course , being thoroughly ' professional ' , they do
offer a discount to honest businessmen !
"
That bags the question :
" Why do businessmen bribe bureaucrats ?
"
My take :
> Dishonest
businessmen bribe bureaucrats ,
# to obtain some unfair advantage
# to keep out competition
# to jump the queue
# to get permissions / licenses / tariff etc
for which they are not eligible
# to get orders for which they are not qualified
...............etc
> Honest
businessmen are forced to bribe the bureaucrats , who hold up /
deny
permissions / services etc that are perfectly / legally due to them
If they
won't , they must pay a heavy price !
Example :
Some 43 years ago , my company decided to shift a
factory from Sion to Madh ( locations , just 20 Km apart in Mumbai )
As the manager of the plant , I applied to all the
concerned departments , indicating the shifting date , some 3 months in advance
I also vigorously followed up for all required
permissions
Every department granted permission , except the Power
/ Energy Dept
They wouldn't issue the letter until I signed an
undertaking , stating that , in all of our future recruitment , 80 % of the recruits
will be " local "
Even though , my company had always followed this
practice at the workmen level , it was not possible to follow it at the
Supervisory - and above - level , since we ,
> conducted campus interviews all over India to get
the best engineers
> advertized our supervisory vacancies , in all
national newspapers
> transferred engineers ( job rotation ) across our
country-wide factories
Apart from that , there was also a raging debate in the
media re this unjust demand , which legal experts had held , "
Un-Constitutional "
My management told me not to sign the undertaking
Result ?
For the next 3 months , my 300 workmen sat idle in the
factory !
We lost production / sales, valued at lakhs of rupees
Looking at our determination , the Government finally
relented and connected the power after 2 months
How could we pull this off ?
Both me - and my boss , the director - were mere paid
" Employees " of a large Public Limited Company and could afford to
stand firm against this " Unfair / Unjust / Illegal " denial of
service
But I doubt if I could have done this if I was myself
the owner of a small factory !
Arvind ,
It is sad to say this , but honest businessmen /
industrialists have no choice , but to bribe , when a lawfully due service gets
withheld
If all of them were to suddenly stop paying bribes for
getting their due services , then our
GDP would dive below 2 % in next 6 months
!
If you come to power - and I hope that you do - please first
ensure that no businessman is denied what is legally due to him
* hemen parekh
( 04 March 2014 /
Mumbai )