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Comment by kghose | Hacker News Reader

FWIW a PAN card is a photo id document that has a tax payer identification number. You can use it to open bank accounts too.

Cash deposits into a bank above a certain amount need a PAN number.

It is widely used as an id document in India (where a passport or voter id document was once used).

I didn't know people without Indian citizenship could get PAN cards.

PS. One way of handling Indian bureaucracy is by hiring a middleman (say a tax consultant) who handles the necessary formalities, including bribes and leg work.

India is what India is.

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> India is what India is. I know what you mean, but in this case, think of it from the foreigners perspective. I don't think anyone in their right mind is really prepared for the kind of insanity you begin to accept as natural after being in India.

India is what India is: which can be traumatically scarring, especially when dealing with the bureaucrats - as the blog points out.

Also - the idea of hiring a middle man, to just fill paper and interface with the system, is probably unthinkable to anyone who deals with a working system.

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If anyone thinks that this is an opportunity, have at it. I hope you succeed.

More importantly I hope that you survive and are better for it.

But we need to simplify things. As an Indian business serving Indian customers I can tell you that the whole thing is pretty fucked up. I cannot put it more politely than this. Most of the enterprise clients of mine have 30 to 60 day payment cycles which involve a lot of paper, rubber stamps and signatures. That is just retarded. To add insult to injury the government expects you to pay service tax (due on the date of invoice) for the money that you have not collected yet. I regret setting up a business in India. There are too many unsavoury things to deal with.

30 to 60 day payment cycles are in every country, nothing special about India. One main contractor I worked for in the UK (manages the building of buildings) used to have a dashboard showing how late payments to them were in 30, 60, 90, 90+ slots.

There are plenty of guides and advice on what you should be doing to avoid this as an SME or sole contractor.

>India is what India is.

Reminds me of Dev Dutt's TED Talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/devdutt_pattanaik.html

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