• I Paid A Bribe
• 10 years ago
• 1031 views

I paid bribe to collect my own stuff which I had sent via air cargo

• Customs, Excise and Service Tax
• Customs Clearance of Import Shipment
• Paid INR 12,000

Had to move to India after working in Indonesia for some time and while coming back I had quite a lot of extra kgs on my luggage, so I decided to send the same via air cargo rather than carrying it along with me on the same aircraft, since it seemed a cheaper option. I was happy that I was returning back to my own country,hardly did I know that my country and the people involved at each stage of its system are so corrupt that what followed next would kill the respect that I have for this nation. When the cargo arrived Kolkata airport, I was just unable to trace it for two days, neither was the Forwarding party able to tell me the location nor did the receiving party let out any information, finally after three days of receiving the cargo we get a call from the cargo services that it was time to come and pick the cargo and there will be handling charges levied for the 3 days that the cargo was lying at the customs (which obviously we had no clue about). My wife was the only available person on such a short notice who could go and collect the cargo from the custom clearance. As soon as she entered the custom area, she was approached by a flock of agents who claimed to help fasten the process otherwise it would take 5-8 days to receive the bags (not to mention that it isnt an office where women deal very often, I respect my wife for being courageous enough to take the task upon herself and try beating all the odds) (oh and also that the faster procedure meant 5hrs of torture), here starts the bribe deal, so the first step was to pay these so called agents around 2k for nothing more than just directing who to meet and where. Then what happened next shows how the whole heirarchy in any system is involved in the corruption and dont even spare common people who just want to get their personal belongings, next up was the custom clearing officer who claimed that the baggage would be levied 37% custom tax and thus a sum of around 8k has to be paid, if we wanted to escape it he offered to accept 5k without a receipt. Thanks to my Management background and the little attention I paid while enjoying my back bencher days, I pointed my wife out that according to the customs duty act 1988 annexure 4 he can't charge any custom duty on personal belongings except jewellery, electronics and furniture, after several attempts of my wife trying to reason the guy out for not charging illegitimate money, he had to be bribed with 2k, without which he would not let the baggage move to the custom checking department, oops I forgot to mention all this was apart from the 300$ fee which the cargo company had charged and 2kINR which the airport handling had chrged and the custom entry charges. Finally the custom checking and final checkpoint guy pointed out some rubbish theory of including some cosmetics into custom payable items and charged some additional 3k INR. Greatest lesson of Import Export and duty which even the Management Classes couldnt teach. This is my question to all the torch bearers and the optimists out there who say that this country will change one day and things like "we should try to bring the change ourselves, one man can bring a diffference", do you really think it will change??,well I tried and failed. And to all those who would say "System mein aise hi hota hai, process easy ho jata hai, its better to pay otherwise the process is realy long", I would just say one thing- "Who made the process so long and complex, these guys are not helping you make the process easy by bribing them, but its you making the process difficult by bribing them and they have made the process in such a way that you get frustrated and end up paying". So the conclusion is that this is the country where the common man is just being crushed into the mud of corruption, consumers have to go through all the crap thrown on their face by the system and i simply pity on the investors who view this nation as the golden bird. MERA BHARAT MAHAAN KHULKE CHALTA HAI KHAAN PAAN, JAI HO