Cholesterol for us produces steroids for them.

"Now that India's policymakers have taken on board Richard Thaler's principle of nudge, it is time to get them moving faster on another track he has been advocating recently -- removing sludge," wrote S Kale. What is sludge? "Businesses in India face 58,000-plus possible compliances a year -- there are multiple regulators and government departments at the centre, state and city, and gram panchayat level, each putting in demands." Indian politicians do not believe in nudge, they believe in treating every citizen as criminal and using extreme prejudice. Thus any mistake in filing or calculating the very complex goods and services tax (GST) will invite severe punishment. The GST "is one of the most complex with the second highest tax rate in the world among a sample of 115 countries which have a similar indirect tax system, the World Bank said in a report". Tax inspectors spent days spying on a small shop selling 'kachoris' (fried snacks) in Aligarh and triumphantly arrested the owner for not paying GST on annual sales exceeding Rs 6 million. Turned out that the man is poor and had no knowledge of GST rules. A new transport bill increases fines for traffic violations by 5-20 times, apparently to prevent deaths due to traffic accidents. There is no word on making roads free of potholes which killed 3,597 in 2017. Potholes killed 9,300 from 2015 to 2017 and caused 25,000 injuries. There is no word on improving drainage of roads, of functioning traffic lights and of traffic police regulating traffic to help people instead of using them as collection agents. Rules are changed frequently to trap businesses. "Over the past 12 months, there have been more than 2,400 changes in compliance requirements across 1,100 plus Acts."  When a new company is incorporated it is allotted a "Corporate Identity Number, Permanent Account Number and Tax Deduction and Collection Account Number, and automatically registered for Goods and Services Tax, Employees State Insurance Corp, and Employees' Provident Fund Organization". Being small is no solution. Our 63 million micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) may have to cope with "60,000-plus possible compliances and 3,300-plus possible filings for enterprises". To avoid this enormous burden 92% of businesses stay informal, which means no safety net for workers. It is enormously difficult to open a restaurant in Delhi while many of those in Bengaluru are shutting down. Real estate prices are kept artificially high by politicians and civil servants by limiting supply of land and by "opaque laws" because they have invested their ill-gotten gains in real estate, wrote R Jagannathan. Regulations are seen as 'cholesterol' by economists which blocks the flow of life giving blood in the economy. What they don't know is that cholesterol in the first step in production of steroid hormones. Regulatory cholesterol for us is steroids for politicians and civil servants. Fair exchange?