New Delhi, July 6 -- India's Customs Act of 1962 consolidated colonial-era laws drafted to collect revenue and police the ports and borders of the Raj. A gold-control regime had just been imposed. The economy was closed, foreign exchange rationed and borders guarded to keep goods out and capital in.

The 1991 reforms were three decades away. This was a law anchored in suspicion, built for a command economy-not an open one, let alone an open democracy.

In 2025, India's finance minister promised "a complete overhaul of customs." That overhaul should begin with deletions, guided by Jagdish Bhagwati's argument that protectionism does not protect-it redistributes from the efficient to the connected and from the economy to the bureaucracy admi...