spikengineer

Yep. Just got logged out and cannot log back in. It redirects to logout immediately after login.

sumatra uses a mupdf backend. Same as zathura on linux.

It's a potential situation India is always worried about from a strategic aspect. India is neither strategically aligned to the US nor against it. Historically US strongly supported India's enemies and actively worked against India's interests all the way from 1945 to mid-2000's. US under various administration even threatened attack or sanctions when things don't go their way.

Current day:

Right now in 2021, US is threatening sanctions under a US law called CAATSA just because India bought a few missiles from Russia which is a long standing defence supplier to India. I know that CAATSA is forced on Biden and Trump by US Congress but it doesn't matter to India whether the US executive is doing it intentionally or not, the US state is threatening sanctions over CAATSA. In this era, when India is actively fighting/hindering Chinese agression on it's borders and taking actual casualties where acting against China is also in US interests, US threatens economic sanctions against Indian institutions and companies just because they bought a few surface to air missiles which they think are the most economical option to deter Chinese attack.

US Treasury calls India a currency manipulator and threatens to cutoff India from the USD financial system (as per US appropriation acts enacted to target China) although economists call such a designation as stupid when used against low per capita income developing countries with a current account deficit just because India tries to prevent an exchange rate blowout that could lead to many millions of Indians falling below the poverty line or losing line of income.

Historical:

In 1999, Clinton threatened to summarily sanction India on all fronts including financial when India threatened to go beyond the de-facto border to restrain Pakistan forces after they occupied Indian territory in Kargil. This threat repeated in 2002 after they supported the Pakistani position after Pakistan sponsored terrorists attacked the Indian parliament and India threatened to retaliate against Pakistan.

Every time Pakistan does something stupid against India, US intervenes and threatens to sanction India under the vacuous argument that they want to prevent a "nuclear armageddon". It's not in india's interests to succumb to such threats when they aren't the source of the problem.

In 1998, when India tested it's nukes for the 2nd time, Clinton placed a breadth of sanctions on India because US doesn't like nuclear proliferation although India had nukes sinces 1974 and everyone knew pak had since the mid-1980's and US turned a blind eye although it knew that China, Pak and North Korea are working together on them. US wants so called strategic balance between India and Pakistan and actively supports Pakistan on many issues. This prevents India from deterring China as it has spend resources countering Pakistan which itself is propped up by US Military and economic aid.

In 1971, Nixon threatened to nuke India if India doesn't withdraw from current day Bangladesh when India intervened to stop a Pakistan Army led genocide and the resulting refugee crisis. Nixon didn't follow through because India convinced USSR to provide a similar counter threat.

What happens to an economy if 100% of retail electronic transactions stop overnight?

It is not in India's sovereign interest to let foreign companies control any significant chunk of the financial sector and it's especially not acceptable if they are US companies because US frequently uses this leverage of threat of sanctions to get it's way against Indian ineterests.

MDR problem can be solved as you indicated. It also needs a solution pretty soon too.

EU and developed countries' banks live and finance their profits on fees as they don't make much or any money on loans and other traditional financial tools. Those fees aren't going to go away.

Yes, some basis exists for such assumptions. RuPay and UPI were originally conceptualised by RBI and Govt of India to solve the overdependence problem. Otherwise RBI and GoI had no reason to introduce RuPay and they could have let the market develop organically.

Recent RBI moves of data localisation and enforcement actions against Diners, American Express and Mastercard also indicate strong intent.

I don't agree with your interpretation on this being a stealth tactic but even if this was one it's just the state institutions acting in the interest of their mandate. This might not be beneficial to you employer or Visa or MasterCard or few high flying credit card users of the super rich class but it is in the interest of the people.

If they think it's time to move beyond cards due to the strategic overdependence on foreign service providers like Visa who can disrupt the Indian financial system at the behest of their US govt or other interests it's the right thing to discourage them directly or indirectly.

Think in the interest of the people. WTO commitments are not worth the paper they are written on. State should do the right thing to benefit the people as a whole not worry about inconvenience to a few people or few middle men or foreign companies.

Please understand the context behind the rules before ranting.

PayPal restrictions exist because india doesn't have free capital account convertibility and forex providers need to implement regulatory mechanisms to comply with forex regulations. The regulations on forex haven't changed in many years. It's paypal who isn't bothered to comply with mechanisms implemented and hence removed those features as they felt customers like you aren't worth it to them.

Most developing countries have capital controls like India for financial stability reasons and removing it for the sake of small segment of entrepreneurs feeling difficulty to process some payments or can't manage the accounting is not in the interest of the state or it's people.

Stripe thinks you are worth it to them and are providing that service. Find better service providers. Talk to a bank.

As far as GST is concerned, every country has tax accounting. Some other countries like in Europe have it way worse on the paperwork. Have you ever dealt with pre-GST service tax or VAT paperwork? Accounting is a universal thing and it's the reality of doing business.If you think just by jumping one country to the other you can avoid taxes or paperwork you need to rethink your approach to business. Most countries who don't have taxes or tax paperwork are just tax havens living off someone else's money. Will you go to NZ/Canada and not do their tax paperwork?

If it's getting harder, maybe your size is large enough to hire an accountant to do that work for you.

If you have so many customers overseas maybe you better incorporate a foreign subsidiary or an IFSC subsidiary to manage USD transactions.

These rules won't be changed for you - there are larger socio economic reasons for the rules.

UPI primarily uses a virtual private address in the form of an email address.

You only need to disclose this vpa to the merchant.

It looks like username@statebank

You don't need to disclose your phone number or bank account number to the merchant if you don't want to as UPI has multiple address mechanisms.

You can also use QR

Not a problem since the last two years - widely available but expensive. They are irradiated at BRIT, Navi Mumbai and shipped of directly to Atlanta. India now has many irradiation facilities and exports are picking up.

It's actually called Paracetamol in the rest of the world except USA. It's in the list.

Since 2017, India has abolished state VAT by a constitutional amendment. Now there is a single consumption tax system called the GST across all states. A GST council collects all taxes and devolves receipts to states as per law.

The income tax is also devolved as per law.

I am neither an expert nor familiar with US constitutional law, but in most other countries the federal power trumps the power of any states/provinces and is not limited by a single clause and helps simplify and remove any disparities in taxation policy. As far as property taxes are concerned, most countries retain the policy to keep the local councils empowered to decide tax rates albeit "within the rate limits and fairness criteria imposed by the states and federal governments". In my country property taxes cannot be made zero/low or made exceptionally high by a showoff city council trying to get reelected for whatever reason as this causes unnecessary migration between cities/towns for no practical reason other than to skirt taxes with no practical systemic benefit to the populace at whole.

In Most countries, the National legislature can restructure states, impose nationwide simplification of tax policy etc within the limits of the federal structure they have. US is one of the few countries the relationship is the other way around.

In most countries, the states get their power from the delegation of powers dictated by the union/federal constitution. In US, The union gets their power from the few matters that were delegated to them from the states.

For example, India used to have such disparity in consumption taxes (not income tax) which was recently removed and simplified. The federal govt collects all consumption and income taxes and devolves the receipts to states based on pre-defined formulae enshrined in law.

Edit: In an ideal world, instead of filing separate state and federal tax returns US should move to a common system where tax can be collected/enforced by one entity and the receipts devolved to states as per certain rules. This will remove income tax disparity between states and equalise business/opportunity costs (No more Delaware tax havens for companies to skirt taxation). This will simplify a lot of things. Most countries including mine have such a singular system.