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My Friend Sancho
My first novel, My Friend Sancho, is now on the stands across India. It is a contemporary love story set in Mumbai, and was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize 2008. To learn more about the book, click here.
To buy it online from the US, click here.
I am currently on a book tour to promote the book. Please check out our schedule of city launches. India Uncut readers are invited to all of them, no pass required, so do drop in and say hello.
If you're interested, do join the Facebook group for My Friend Sancho
Click here for more about my publisher, Hachette India.
And ah, my posts on India Uncut about My Friend Sancho can be found here.
Recent entries
Here’s the WTF headline of the day: Woman co-pilot lands jet solo If that was a man, this wouldn’t…
Via Ta-Nehisi Coates, I came across this beautiful poem named “Dear Augusta,” by Reginald Dwayne Betts. Check it out—and…
Speaking about his new film Shaapit, Vikram Bhatt says: I did some research and a very important fact emerged.…
The Indian Express informs us of the invention of a washing machine for pets, which “gives pets an automatic…
The WTF opening sentence of the day comes from a Rediff report: According to the National Crime Record Bureau…
19 February, 2009
Naive Or Mad?
You have to be either naive or mad to start a business in India, I believe—and if you are the first of those, you may soon become the second. Check out this piece by Sandeep Kohli on the difficulty of doing business in India: “The License Raj Is Dead. Long Live the License Raj.”
Honestly, Kohli’s piece makes it appear that he had it easy. I have friends who run businesses in India who have been driven to the verge of nervous breakdowns by local authorities out to fleece them. In most places in the world, a business is successful when it fulfills the needs of its customers; in India, you first have to fulfill the needs of a thousand assorted babus—only then do you reach your customers, with your costs already so high that you can’t give your customers anywhere near as good a deal as you otherwise would be able to.
Check out The Corruption Rant for an example of what a businessman in India has to go through. Also consider the fate of the Four Seasons hotel in Mumbai, the opening of which “was delayed by at least two years” because “the hotel needed 165 government permits - including a special licence for the vegetable weighing scale in the kitchen and one for each of the bathroom scales put in guest rooms.” 165 government permits. Licenses for weighing scales. What kind of crazy country are we living in?
Also read: India’s Far From Free Markets.
(HT: Reuben and Mohit, separately, for the Kohli piece; Reuben for the Four Seasons piece.)
Posted by Amit Varma in
