Police Registration, Medical Forms & More Paperwork

One of the major obstacles to getting anything done in this day and age is paperwork. Lots and lots of paperwork. Ridiculous amounts of paperwork. In this way, India is no less demanding than the United States. First, the Indian government requires visitors to fill out forms. For all people who have a visa for more than 180 days, they must register with the Indian police within 14 days of their arrival in the country. In order to register, you need passport photos. But they are not standard size passport photos, they are stamp size photos. So upon our arrival in Hyderabad, we had to pay a man to take photos of us and print them in stamp size. Then the police require you to fill out two seperate forms. One is two pages, the other is four pages. What nosey people! They asked incredibly personal questions about religion, finances, lifestyle, etc. And they asked the same questions over and over again. To top it off, they are incredibly picky about the way that you fill out the forms. You must write in all capital letters. You can not cross anything out. You can't write over any lines. You need to write the dates in a particular way. We spent an entire morning filling out these forms. Then the University requires various forms. We needed to fill out information cards to get student ids (which required passport photos of stamp size again), medical forms, and forms to take books out of the library (which required standard size passport photos). It was a mess. By the end of the day I can conclude that 1. paperwork is the most aggravating thing in the world 2. people can't follow directions.