[fakedang]

Don't you need to donate at least $100k to influence senators or influence party positions in the US? Sure, you could "buy" a politician for cheaper, but you're not guaranteeing they will toe your line.

India is ridiculously expensive - bribes often amount to 50 lakh rupees to 1 crore + rupees, which amounts to roughly $50k-100k per politician. Not to mention bribery at the lower rungs of the ladder where everyone from the politician's toilet janitor all the way to the politician's chief of staff will demand their pound of flesh, usually in the tune of tens of lakhs of rupees (~$10k).

[thanksgiving]

That's not a good thing. From what I understand, a lot of "cheaper" bribes in India are for things that the government employees must do as a part of their jobs so like a bribe for these government employees to do their job basically which still filters up to the highest levels of government.

Why would you agree to stick your neck out for something illegal on the cheap when you can wring the ordinary people to do your job?

All this is based on second hand information so please correct me where I am wrong. Also probably things are different in different parts of the country?

[fakedang]

I'm not saying it's a good or a bad thing - bribery is bad, full stop. I wanted to draw a comparison between how expensive it is in India vs the UK, which means that a relatively smaller pool of individuals can actually afford to bribe in India vs the UK, which makes projects more concentrated in the hands of a few (which is still a lot in a bit country like India).

On the other hand, I was a member of the Treasury group and the Leaders group of the Tory party until recently, with just a "paltry" donation of £50k, which got me the ear of a sitting PM and regular meetings with the Chancellor. Good luck trying to get that kind of access in India or the US with the PM.

The cheaper bribes were a tangent, but just to show that doing business in India is actually more expensive than in the UK (where there are no such bribes).

[SanjayMehta]

This is exactly how it works.