This is a big question in India- How much is your salary? Since the India has started developing, people have changed the way they used to talk. About twenty years ago, the first question after meeting someone was- What your parents do? But today the first question is what do you do and then what your parents do. The family is still very important in Indian society so I am sure it will be present for long times. But the problem is that salary is always a confusing number in India. People don’t know how much money do they make. Even though they have a fixed salary but still they don’t know the right amount they make because bribery is a big part of their income. 

This is the way this question goes:- Someone asks other person:- What is your salary? The first person:- ten thousand but I make about twenty including everything. This everything means bribe. Sometimes people say only their right salary then other person asks does it include everything. This bribe has become a part of people’s salary, specially government employees. Most of the government employees are involved in bribery. They just don’t work without taking bribe. I can not think of any government department where I can get any work done without offering bribe to the government officers. 

Whether it is civil courts, electricity department, water department, municipality, road transport office,  police… just any department. If someone wants a case to be heard after a month, it is very easy. I just need to offer some money to the clerks and they give a date as per my convenience. If someone doesn’t want to pay the actual electricity bill, it is very easy. They can pay 25% of the bill to a electricity office employee and get the bill decreased by 50%. Getting a fake driving license, no problem. You never go through any test. Just bribe someone and they give you the driving license. It doesn’t matter if you can drive or not.

Sometimes I wonder how big the difference is between Indian government offices and western government offices. When any western person asks me about my salary and I tell them a amount then they ask me if this amount is after tax or before tax. But in India people say if the amount is after bribe or before bribe. What a huge difference. Most of the people don’t pay any income tax. It is very easy to hide the income and do not pay any tax. People decide how much do they want to pay as income tax. 

Since India is still in lack of jobs, very few people get their salary in their bank accounts. Most of the people get their salary direct in hand and government never knows about it. There is a another problem with getting salary in hand. All the cities have a standard minimum wage but I don’t think if any employer thinks about it. Huge number of people get only half of the standard wage. Even companies like Coca-Cola don’t pay standard wage to its temporary employees. I think we need more records in computers and maybe this will solve a lot of problems. But who knows, maybe a new technique to defeat computers.