In India you can understand kafka best. He has a story where a guy is waiting outside court and he is stopped by the guard. Guy decides to wait, and wait he does-years pass by with both of them left waiting (and both he and guard are there).

The guy is about to die and asks the guard

F*** You Paypal

"Everyone strives to reach the Law," says the man, "so how does it happen that for all these many years no one but myself has ever begged for admittance?" The doorkeeper recognizes that the man has reached his end, and to let his failing senses catch the words, roars in his ear: "No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it."

The recent RBI restrictions imposed on Paypal just make you empathize with the story. You want to earn your country some foreign currency. You work you ass-off trying to get clients to pay you. You don’t have any trustworthy system, especially in a country which has half of its ministers accused in scams. Still by just working on wafer thin profit margin you get the client to pay you through paypal, and you realize that you can’t get more than 500 USD payment form him!! He may pay in installments with every transaction less than 500 ? Wrong, he can cancel the order after first installment.

Will RBI reimburse me for lost business? NO!

It is not that you are using money to fund terrorists or any other illegal activity. Our PAN card number is linked with the account, statements are available to be assessed, your purpose code has been entered. But no, Indian government doesn’t like you earning money.

It may seem in this rant that I am illogical and don’t care about laws and reasons behind those laws. But sadly that is not the case. The RBI in the name of security and power to safeguard “Indian interests” are really destroying the system.

Seeing from a accounts side; I pay 5 percent to paypal to receive money on my behalf, I get 90 percent of market exchange rate, from Paypal; when I have to buy software from outside India Paypal charges my credit card which further charges me 110 percent of market exchange rate. I know we believe in Keynessian theory where we will pay people to dig hole and then to pay to fill it and economy will revive; but why should i be made to bear all the expense when I am paying all the taxes imaginable there over every iota of thing. Leave aside the fact that I am left exhausted as I have to constantly waste my time in trying to transfer money form this account to other!

Thanks RBI, may you rot in hell increasing base points further .