This is the second in this series, the first post on Culture of Business, Service and Consumption is here.

Attitude to Rules and Regulations:

• No rule is absolute, everything can be worked around, finding loopholes in regulations is perceived as smart
• Paying hard earned money to government as taxes is considered dumb.
• Attitude towards wealth - Goddess ìLaxmiî resides in your house in the form of wealth; if you please her and are attached to her she will flourish, if you let her "slip through your fingers," she will desert you.

• Bribery is rampant everywhere: from acquiring a birth certificate to getting into a good school - it is 'commission,' almost like a service charge paid to the concerned person for doing your work

• This type of approach to rules and regulations has deeper cultural roots; Brahmins had to be paid 'dakshina' - fees to conduct rituals to invoke the gods, they were 'brokers' to reach God
• Indians paid 'lagaan' - taxes in the feudal system, which went first to the Rajas and then the Moguls and British
• Hierarchies are important to Indians - but at the same time, knowing how to work around them and the system is considered smart and right

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