I would disagree. India is not a police state. India is a bureaucratic state. These regulations are not meant to frighten or intimidate people. As the article points out, they're so ineffectual as to be laughable. Police states tend to be quite a bit more brutal than that.
No, all of these regulations, permits and rules are classic hallmark of bureaucratic empire building. All those Internet cafés now need to be inspected to ensure that they're keeping track of their customers. The department that manages to grab that privilege has access to more lobbying power, more bribes, and more influence. Any politician would lust after side-benefits like that. So, after any catastrophe, the answer is always more regulations and more inspections, regardless of whether those regulations and inspections would do anything to actually solve the problem.
> India is not a police state. India is a bureaucratic state.
Agreed - I nearly laughed when I read this title. One could construct a more convincing argument that India is an anarchic state (at least, anarchic in the Snow Crash sense - the government 'exists', but it's not central, and its authority is all but nonexistent. A 'police state' with effectively no authority or power is hardly a police state, at least the way we usually use the term). Obviously India is neither of the above, but you get my point.
Just a few months ago, there was an electrical fire in our garage (in India). Thankfully the private security guard for the house next door was able to convince the private construction workers down the street to put it out, because the fire department took almost an hour to get there. Why? They couldn't figure out where we were, even when given our address, and even after contacting the local police. (The police are a completely separate department, and there is no real equivalent of 911).
Police states may be bad, but how much do you really fear a so-called 'police state' that isn't even capable of locating its citizens when they comply, let alone identifying the ones who don't? India is a very large country, and it's very easy to slip through the cracks if you need to... and sometimes even when you try your best not to[2]!
And this experience will be very different depending on which city/state you're in, which if anything underlines how India is not a police state - it's not centralized or organized enough to be one.
But the second part of your point is nothing new - in fact, this is a dramatic step forwards from the early License Raj[1] days, IMHO.
India is not a police state. India is a bureaucratic state.
Even that is interesting. It shows us that bureaucracy (and, I'd say, failure to respect one's property rights) can become indistinguishable from a police state.
No, all of these regulations, permits and rules are classic hallmark of bureaucratic empire building. All those Internet cafés now need to be inspected to ensure that they're keeping track of their customers. The department that manages to grab that privilege has access to more lobbying power, more bribes, and more influence. Any politician would lust after side-benefits like that. So, after any catastrophe, the answer is always more regulations and more inspections, regardless of whether those regulations and inspections would do anything to actually solve the problem.