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Comment by blntechie | Hacker News Reader

I think what the OP went through is pretty much re-zoning of an agricultural land to commercial/industrial land which probably will run into similar roadblocks in Western world too? Of course, not saying it will take this long but have heard about similar bureaucracy.

Small town governments in USA at least are very strict with their zoning codes and based on things what I have heard, changing the zone sometimes require even putting the change in a ballot! Mostly requires council approval I guess but the process is similarly full of red tape. I remember a very similar article by someone who tried to start a business at their home in some US state and the red tape he had to go through.

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>Small town governments in USA at least are very strict with their zoning codes

Even cities in the US. I live in a "historic District" in cambridge ma in a big ugly brick building with 35 units. 3 of us wanted to change windows, as they're original 1940s and terrible. So we go to get a permit. The permit department sees "exterior change" looks at the address, and sends it to the historical commission. They won't sign off, we have to attend a hearing. They don't like replacement windows,[1] so we fill out the permit and go to the meeting.

We please our case to the four commissioners and no problem. We get the permit, everything was handled professionally, but its a 2 month delay and kind of a pain. I know its encouraging people to do changes without permits. Some of my neighbors (bless their hearts) seem to love to complain about any change, to anything so they're not helping. I can't imagine trying to build something new. (Some renovations were shot down in the meeting and they're invited to work with the commissioners to come up with a compromise.)

https://www.cambridgema.gov/historic/permitsApplications

I know restaurants that have had to wait a few months for inspections which delay openings. Its a balance, but sometimes it tips too far.

cambridge on windows. [1]https://www.cambridgema.gov/historic/aboutchc/~/media/FF5F4A...

Cambridge is not representative of reality outside of Cambridge.

Double-paned windows are not allowed in several historic neighborhoods I’ve lived or worked in. Pretty sure they’re banned in much of SF.

That's a fit of irony considering that many of the places with the most stringent regulations in this aspect are also places which have taken other actions ostensibly to help the environment. Reducing the energy demands of basic living seems to be more beneficial than nearly any other action that could be taken, such as banning plastic bags and straws.

It is ironic.

But, in the end we got our double paned windows.

Interestingly, Harvard's HouseZero was at the same historical committee meeting we went to, with a request for "Triple panes". They were approved for everything they asked for..

I wonder how well its working..

https://snohetta.com/projects/413-harvard-housezero

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/12/harvards-hous...

Its similar in many US cities with historical districts.

It is not just about red tape, it is about corruption. Govt. Employees in India join the Govt job only for "alternative" revenue ( bribes ). This process is usually handled by "agents" who knows how much these govt employees expect and provide "easy" services to whoever wants to get shit done.

To take an example a simple thing like driving license takes couple of months to get if one is planning not to involve an agent, but you can get driving license ( without knowing any driving ) in 1 month if you have an agent.

>> This process is usually handled by "agents" who knows how much these govt employees expect and provide "easy" services to whoever wants to get shit done

That's probably why some people would block the application and even refuse bribes; they probably already have exclusive deals with agents who pay them regular bribes and will not even bother to risk accepting bribes through unproven channels. They literally monopolized the regulatory pipelines and have setup an entire supply chain around it.

Yes, worst part is unless you are inside their trust circle, you will be met with roadblocks even when money is paid. It will be even worse if you are competing with existing local player

It's the same in the Philippines and other developing countries run by corrupt trapo ("filthy rags") politicians. If you go down to the LTO (Land Transportation Office) to get your driver's license, the entrance is crowded with "fixers" who, for a fee of course, will take care of your license for you and even take the driving test for you. There is no enforcement in terms of making the applicant take the driving test themselves, so guess what? For a fee you don't have to prove you can drive or even know the rules of the road. You'll probably get your license in a hour or so. If you insist on doing it yourself and making an end run around this "system", it might take days to a week to get your license. The resulting conditions on traffic and accident rates are exactly what you might expect. Nobody cares.

2 - 7 days? In Finland it takes 10 - 14 weeks :D There are mandatory theory and driving lessons to take. Well actually the law changed recently so now it takes "only" 6 - 10 weeks.

I promise you, Finland is a lot more serious about road and traffic safety than the Philippines.

Apparently in PK these days government competes with agents on service and will take same money and deliver DL to your house

What about the employees themselves? Does govt pay bonus to employees based on performance? If not, they will fall back to original practices

It must become simple for a bribery captured in evidence to be prosecuted. This is anarchy otherwise.

It's very hard to capture.

All they do is - keep silence. If you understand the cues and pay up yourself, your work will be done otherwise you can keep waiting forever.

It's trivial to capture if there is a will. Send an agent who offers a bribe, fire the worker if the bribe is accepted.

Most of the time, they don’t ask for money explicitly at all but they will put procedural roadblocks so one pick up the cue and bribe them. Like Priority Shipping for a bad analogy. Pay to fasten and smoothen your experience kind of thing.

Of course it’s illegal.

Same for me registering a car. The dealer sent me 12 documents and the inspector wanted a few more. The dealer wasn't clear what they were. So I had to waste a few hours for two days. The agent was able to cut the queue and I spent as much time as to expose the engine number under the bonnet. The agent is the funnel for bribe from me to the department.

It appears that way. If you talk to them directly they are going to ignore you and delay things. Then there are agents that specialize in fast tracking. The agents know the officials and hand over the arranged bribe and the agent just charges more to cover the bribe.

There is now plausible deniability because the agents look like they are actually providing a valuable service.

One trick it to leave a desk drawer half empty and then they go for a tea break. If they come back and they don't see money in their desk drawer, then it's hard for you to complain when they mark something in your forms as incomplete and ask you to redo it or whatever. And the next time you come to the office, you might be accidentally left to wait for a couple of hours and how you do make a decent complaint about that?

> evidence to be prosecuted

Just be sure to bribe the police, the judge etc.

Well, These employees had to pay bribes to get that position in the first place. Its turtles all the way down.

I think in the US it GREATLY depends on what is going in that location.

"Light industrial", at least in my area is a pretty easy thing to rezone by the local authorities. At least it is in my area in suburbia in the twin cities MN.

Granted that doesn't mean a town couldn't just say 'no'. On the other hand there's plenty of land already potentially rezoned land you can buy and it's no big deal.

Now bigger scale industrial is a whole other story. Nobody wants a smelting plant company to just show up at the city council meeting and announce they bought a bunch of farm land on the edge of the town...

There are hardly any lands zoned as "industrial use" in India and all land is agricultural land by default because of the high fertility of land everywhere.

Yes that's right. It's similar.

But the problem is that the whole of India is made up of hundreds and thousands of small towns. And there are hardly any land banks zoned as industrial land because almost all of India is fertile land.

Agree to an extent. Only the industrial parks and other similar areas are zoned as industrial and I guess it’s hard to setup your warehouse for example there? Of course, you had the land which was the primary motivation, if not, SME industrial parks would be the way to go.

Exactly, this is a re-zoning process not “opening a manufacturing plant”.

I can almost guarantee this land was purchased for significantly less because it is agricultural land as well.

States have plenty of reasonable concerns about re-zoning agricultural land into commercial land. The most obvious being that if there are spills or other environmental issues it could destroy much of the agricultural land around it. Needing to know past owners is to make sure a previous bad actor did not create a new shell company to sell to hide the real owner. The previous owner could have already been banned from commercial development due to the above or other issues.

The fact that the author is intentionally misleading this article shows that they are a dishonest actor and is part of why we ended up needing all this procedure.

The problem is not the number of documents he had to do, he didn’t have major concerns on that .

The bribery expected in many of the depts, broken website, all the delays , lack of responses, after 9 months he is not more than half way into the process is the problem .

If they denied him with valid reasoning early on and communicated in reasonable time this won’t be a problem .

If you bothered to read the blog. You would know he was okay with getting certificates from forestry department but he got stuck because of BRIBES.

> States have plenty of reasonable concerns about re-zoning agricultural land into commercial land. The most obvious being that if there are spills or other environmental issues it could destroy much of the agricultural land around it.

Ironically both the Forestry Dept. and the Pollution Control Board were the fastest to certify so maybe this isn't the problem, eh?

The author is dishonest because he refuses to pay bribes? If anything dishonest people have an easier time because they would just pay the bribe.

The author doesn't complain about the necessity. He is complaining that compliance doesn't result in receiving a permit.

Thats right. Majority of the problems here are from re-zoning agricultural land into an industrial one. If you build your manufacturing unit in an existing industrial area you can skip a lot of this type of paperwork.

You won't face these overt bribes - there's a difference between red tape and the requirement for bribes

I think the problem here is the sheer amount of agencies that need to be dealt with. In other parts of the world, it's not easy but at least you typically just need approval from a single entity (the town council)... The hard part is just waiting; it can take a decade to get approval in some cases.

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