My personal car was stopped by octroi officers near a state border in India. They searched my car, and then said that I should have paid octroi tax on the personal computer I was carrying in the car.

I told them that all taxes were paid including VAT and Octroi for the computer when I bought it 5 years ago.

The said it doesn't matter, I must stop at the Octroi office and pay taxes again every time I am crossing a state border for everything I am carrying in my vehicle.

He said my only option is to pay them bribe, or they will impound my vehicle indefinitely.

Yes, this is fairly common in all of South Asia.

The way to get around this is to look poor and be brown/black. Whenever I go back:

1) I buy a local school bag back ( put my expensive laptop and phone in it )

2) wear wife beater that is slight dirty.

3) do not shave.

4) speak only in Hindi.

5) wear only chapal ( bathroom style )

7) let your hair grow and do not comb.

Once you look poor enuf - no one will disturb you.

Since my job is programming - I really do not need to look presentable since people know who I am. But I do feel sorry for anyone who needs to wear a suit.

Unfortunately the only way you be be rich in public is if you have a bunch of body guards.

These tips usually don't help in India. If you look poor and nobody, the police could even beat you up for no reason.

If you look and act rich & influential, then police and Government officials play nice with you.

so, you're screwed either way? or you should try to look middle class and neither rich nor poor?

Out of curiosity are you ethnically from somewhere in India / South Asia, or a foreigner?

I am Indian.

The post has nothing to do with inter-state commerce. Its to do with Federal Laws set by the Indian Govt, which overall seems to be deeply protectionist. If you ask any historian the reasoning for this attitude in India and why its tolerated - is mainly because of the holdover from the time India was colonized by European Powers.

Essentially what I am saying is that its not easy to sell 'Free Trade' in India.

I wasn't blaming anyone for anything - just staying the facts. I personally think it would help India to loosen up some of its protectionist laws and be a little bit more like China - but that is just my own opinion.

> India's extremely complicated bureaucratic nightmare of inter-state borders and customs/tariffs is the fault of the British?

The West's legacy of (literally) militant mercantilism is the root cause of quite a lot of issues we are currently facing in the world.

The weapons have changed. The mindset remins the same.