Dealing with cumbersome government corruption practices

The one thing that you always want to avoid is doing any kind of activity which involves government bodies but then sometimes you just do not have a choice but to do it. Specially in India, without corruption nothing works.

Yesterday whole day I was at the Land Registrar office working on our land agreement documents. I had seen a plot some months ago which I had liked and finalized and finally we are going ahead with the buying of the property. This plot is is in a remote place cut off completely from the city. It's not a complete off grid living but it is to a great extent cut off from the city hustle and bustle. I liked this particular property very much as it is an open area and in front are mountains.

We were informed that it was going to be an hour work, and we had to reach the office by 12.30. We were sharp on time at the lawyers office, which was our meeting point and from there we had to go to the registrar office. Some documents signing had to be done at the lawyers office which took around half an hour and after that were informed that now we need to wait for 1.5 hours because it was lunch time at the registrar office. We also had our lunch in that time. After that again at 3.30 we were back to the office, and then it was almost 2 hours wait till all the documentation was done, and we got free only by 5.30 p.m. It was quite tiring, against 1 hour which we informed it took 5 hours.

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After everything was done our agent came an informed us that we had to pay them another 6000 Rs. When we enquired for what, he mentioned it had to be given as a token to them for doing the documentation work. That was ridiculous. Already they had taken all the possible fees for the transfer work and now they want this bribe because they filled up the documents. I argued a lot, that this is a part of their job and why should we pay additional to them anything. The agent was also helpless as he was telling us that if we do not give then they would not do our work.

There is also one another documentation which has to be done, for which the official cost of the work is some 1000 Rs/- but these people asked us to pay 15k which is 15 times more than the official price. Our agent had already informed us about this and we had to agree because there is absolutely no choice around it, and this is one of the most important document in land purchase.

It is frustrating to buy into these corrupted systems, from top to bottom everyone is involved. Fighting them out is like fighting the whole system and people do not even have time to get into these legal matters. If once you file a legal case on them then for years you will have to keep going to the court and fighting out the matter, after that who knows things will change or not, but then for sure by that time you would spend more on fighting the case plus your time then the bribe amount.

A land or a house sale or purchase when you would do you would want all the documentation to be in place and hence these people take opportunity of the situation. They know that we do not have much of choice but to agree to their terms, if we do not then they would keep our files pending and never do our work.

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Corruption is to the core in these government systems, at every step they want to earn money. There is no limit to their greed. The agent was telling me, over and above all the other bribes they take which are much bigger amounts, these people for documentation what money they collect, which is supposed to be a meagre amount, still they collect around 200k on a daily basis and distribute amongst themselves. This is real craziness.

When you are buying something new, you do not want all these hassles and you want things to happen smoothly. Though everything did go fine but then I was very irritated with this bribe part. I did not give them the full money they asked for, I kept on holding till everything was completed and then gave them only half of what they asked for. The lady got pissed off with me, but I did not bother much.

When we start building our home on this land I am sure we will have to face many such situations. For every approval there will be bribes. It's all very crazy, but I do not want to think of it much now. Right now I am happy that the purchase part is completed.

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