Honourable Members of Parliament, Allow me to start with the necessary disclaimer. I am a real estate developer—one of those who flout laws, try to make unfair and egregious profits and are constantly plotting and scheming to harm customers. I am glad to note that the new government plans to support laws that were conceived by its predecessor.
The real estate sector in India is hugely under-regulated. Every building, before construction, requires 15 approvals and 15 NOCs (incidentally, the expression “No Objection Certificate” is peculiar to India. I have done business in 15 countries. No other country has this wondrous and beautiful requirement). Every building, after construction, requires 5 approvals and 5 NOCs. But the industry is under-regulated and you are all honourable men and women. It is a universally understood fact in modern India that the principal reason a new law is passed is in order to provide more jobs for serving and retired bureaucrats. It is a brilliant idea to set up 27 (one at the Centre and one in each state) real estate regulators. The person at the helm of each of these regulatory offices should be a civil servant of the rank of a secretary at least. Additionally, each office needs at least two additional secretaries, four joint secretaries, eight deputy secretaries and sixteen under-secretaries, making for 837 important jobs, or posts as our great government prefers to call them. Using an approximate ratio of 15:1 for minor functionaries like section officers and chaprasis, we can safely conclude that the creation of the real estate regulators will generate 13,392 jobs. All of these hard-working government employees will require offices, air-conditioners, homes, staff cars and so on. These expenses should be willingly incurred by the Indian tax-payer, paying particular attention to the fact that these will be recurring expenses for all times to come and will be suitably adjusted upwards by future Pay Commissions. Now, every building will require 17 approvals, instead of a mere 15 before any construction commences. This 13.3 percentage increase in approval requirements can and should be taken as an index of our national progress. More houses are immaterial. More approvals and more NOCs is what we need in India. Besides, we have such an excellent track record of protecting our citizens from spurious drugs, pot-holed roads, unsafe trains and so on. Should we not also be protecting home-buyers in much the same way? Consider the 72nd amendment to our constitution, which your honourable predecessors passed. It was supposed to empower Panchayats. Of course, in the process no one thought of disempowering noble tehsildars, registrars and collectors. Now, in addition to getting approvals and NOCs from the tehsildar, the registrar and the collector (I am not mentioning the patwari, the government surveyor, the town planning department, the fire department, the minor irrigation department, the civil aviation department, the state electricity board, the water and sewerage board,the pollution control board, the great ministry of environment, forests and climate change and the even greater regional development authorities—you are doubtless aware of all of them), we now need the approval of the panchayat. One more bottleneck, one more hurdle in the process. Why it is not considered necessary when introducing a new approval- or NOC-level to do away with an earlier ones remains a mystery. Ah… of course, I forgot that the primary aim of new laws is not to help citizens, but to create new bureaucratic jobs in order to oppress Indian citizens. It is therefore imperative and obligatory that at least 100 new laws are passed in each Parliamentary session and each law must burden Indian businesses with at least two more approvals and two more NOCs. By the year 2025, the Republic of India can change its name to “NOC Approved Republic of India”. In the new law, please make sure that in the event of even one approval or NOC missing, all of the real estate company’s employees are immediately jailed. Please make sure that there are no penalties whatsoever for any government office or official for turning down applications which comply with the laws, or for neither approving nor turning down any application, but simply sitting on them, delaying them, raising meaningless and obscure questions or making excuses of holidays and election duty, in order to ensure that India maintains its record as one of the slowest country in the world for doing business. Government departments and officials are inherently noble. They should not be penalised for delays. They cannot be officially incentivised to speed up work. But of course, unofficial speed money is their birthright. I am so happy that you are planning to increase the number of departments and officials. The threat of jail is very significant. This will ensure that only the most intrepid will enter the business. Besides, it will provide impetus to criminal lawyers, who will now have to deal with more anticipatory bail petitions, more adjournments and so on. We need millions of homes in India—homes that our emerging middle class can afford. Delays, especially in a high interest rate environment like ours, increase costs and reduce affordability. The cost of complying with new and complex laws will also result in fewer affordable homes. But that is a small price to pay if we can increase the number of approvals and NOCs by 13.3% and create an additional 13,392 government jobs and, above all, feel good that we have one more noble law on our statute books. Yours sincerely, Jaithirth Rao The writer is—you guessed it—a real estate developer. -- Kindly email stock reports at STOCKRESEARCHER@googlegroups.com For sharing knowledge -- NIFTYVIEWS.COM NOW A FREE OPEN SOURCE WEBSITE. http://www.niftyviews.com/ Disclaimer :- "The opinions expressed by the members on this board are based on their individual experience and perceptions and to share information with other members with the best of intentions to help fellow members in investment decisions as equity investment is a risky venture.The administrator of www.Niftyviews.com just provide a platform for the authors to express their opinion and take no guarantee for the genuineness of the same."ANY member of this forum doesnt prepare or publish any research report; or ii. provide research report; or iii. make 'buy/sell/hold' recommendation; or iv. give price target; --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Niftyviews.com" group. 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