Keeping a distance

Head for the desi Wild West. And if you get lucky watch the profits roll in.

Setting up shop in India is a breeze as long as the factory inspector, or the rat catcher, is miles away. No surprise then that the two biggest industrial complexes India has produced in the previous centuries — Calcutta and Bombay — are a respectable 1,500 km away from the central hall of Parliament. If Ludhiana, Bhubaneswar, Ranchi and Guwahati figure in a World Bank list of the most hospitable business destinations in the country, our suggestion to the august institution would be to look further afield. Dibang is an extra distance the taxman has to trudge to, with the edifying prospect of the businessman being left in peace to do his stuff. A few kilometres off Hyderabad, which finds a honourable mention, is Naxal land, where there is even lesser red tape to battle. Flaming red commies in the countryside win hands down.

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The quibblers will point to Gurgaon, in New Delhi’s backyard, as a notable exception. But as anyone taking the expressway out of Delhi every evening will tell you, it’s a sovereign republic across the toll plaza. Haryana, the original Wild West, sees no merit in changing a form of governance that has served it well since the first wave of cowboys crossed over the Hindukush.

Here’s a piece of advice to the dollars flowing in. Go to the jungles, the swamps, the hills, and, if possible, to tsunami-prone volcanic craters, for there you just might be able to shake off India’s two biggest natural calamities: the neta and the babu. Everything else is a cakewalk.