Unfair Practices of Amazon, Swiggy, Zomato. What about Banks?

I went to More Supermarket to buy Dabur honey. Dabur honey was put above the topmost rack and I could not take it myself, eventhough, I was not a short person. I called an employee of More to get the Dabur honey, and she took it by using a ladder. I could find the honey of More Brand in the lower racks and I could take it without asking anyone for help. 

Few days later, I went again to More. Now, I don't find Dabur honey, even in the top most rack. But, I could see More honey in the lower racks. When I asked them, they said, Dabur honey was not available and it would take a week or so to get it. 

If the Indian Government holds a grudge on Aditya Birla Group (The parent company of More Supermarket), then I can take this case to the Competition Commission of India on two issues. First one is, More deliberately gave more preference to its brand product than its competitors' products. Second one is, its competitors' products were not available at times, but its own products were available all the time. 

In this specific case, eventhough, there won't be any penalty/action against More, if the Government wants to irritate them, it can do so easily. But, if the target is big (instead of a single More Supermarket), then it can easily impose a significant penalty or take action. 

It is a hypothetical example and I have twisted the facts in my own way. 

I could take anything from the top most racks myself and there was no need for me to call any staff to get anything. Dabur Honey is in a glass bottle, whereas More brand honey and a few other brands are made of plastic. If a plastic bottle falls, then it may not break, whereas if the glass bottle falls, most probably it would break. For that reason, they might have put it in the top most rack, so that people would intentionally take it and it won't fall by mistake. 

During the first wave of corona, I used to fast a lot. For the fast, I was buying honey a lot. My first preference was Dabur Honey. My consumption of Honey was more than what More was procuring. As soon as I found a kg or half kg Dabur Honey, I used to buy it. So, for almost 1.5 months, other customers of More could not have found Dabur Honey of Kg or Half kg bottles (all because of me).

The Indian Government through different arms is accusing Amazon, Swiggy, Zomato and other marketplace sites for its unfair practices just like this example. 

Their rule is, the companies should not bring their related businesses and influence the customer. 

Every business tries to sell more products that give better margin to them and gives less importance to the products that give less margin. It is unethical to interfere in one's business. 

There is no one stopping in setting up another business like Amazon, Swiggy or Zomato. 

But, there is one sector, where not only a common man, even a big industrialist or a very rich person also cannot start a business easily. In those sectors, the Government should make sure that the business is operating fairly and giving importance to one and not to other. That sector is the Banking sector. 

You go to any bank and ask for a locker. Most of the time, they would ask you to take some insurance policy from them to open the locker. Without insurance, they won't give you the locker. In many cases, the insurance is not provided by the bank, but its sister organization. 

A Bank's business is to manage my money and provide additional services like lockers etc. Most of the banks are not in the business of Insurance. Why are they forcing the consumers to take insurance (from their sister organization) to give locker. Is it not unfair practice? 

I had a very bad experience with ICICI on this when I went for a locker. They did not say anything about taking insurance. They took all the forms, deducted money for the locker deposit, opened an FD against the locker, and then I was told that I need to take insurance to open the locker. Without insurance, they were not ready to give me the locker. If they had told me before deducting the money for the locker, I would have simply walked away saying, I did not need the locker. Finally, I settled with investing in ICICI Mutual Funds for the locker. 

When a person who is not aware of anything except FD/RD goes to any bank, there are very high chances that they would be misled.

When the consumer asks to open FD/RD, they would recommend them to invest in Insurance or Mutual Funds, and say that those would give better returns. 

Insurance is the biggest fraud that most of the banks are doing. When a not so financially literate person hears about the insurance, they would be seriously misled. The consumer would not be told about the insurance charges, the risk of the stock market etc. Many of them would be thinking that the bank is guaranteeing 12% interest in addition to the insurance. When they check the balance a year or two years later, they would realize that they are not getting even the amount they have invested. Especially when old people take the insurance, they would lose significant money from their principal. 

For someone who has never heard of Mutual Funds, it is highly possible that they might be thinking that the returns they are telling (verbally) is guaranteed. In the long run, Mutual Funds may catch up with all other types of investments. But, in the short run, it is possible that they may go down significantly. At that time, those who invested in the Mutual Funds would lose.

Government should go behind the businesses which cannot be started by anyone, like the Banking Sector, Financial Sector etc., rather than going behind online food and grocery stores. 

I Feel Pity for the President and Vice President

As per the protocol, if the President is invited for a function, he should be the one who is inaugurating it. He should not be a spectator when someone else is inaugurating. Vice-President is the second in the line of the protocol. If the President is not attending the event, then he should be the one who is inaugurating. He cannot be a spectator when someone who is less in the protocol is inaugurating.

Since, Modi wants to inaugurate, he did not invite the President or Vice-President.

I feel pity for the President and the Vice President for multiple reasons. 

Ex-President Ramnath Kovindh and Ex-Prime Minister Deve Gowda got the invitation and they attended. But, the present President and Vice-President did not get the invite and they could not attend, eventhough it is one of the biggest events of the Government.

A person sends a message to be read by someone else, when they are unable to attend. If the event is too small for their stature, they may just send a message and not actually attend the event. Or if they are too busy with something else, or they are ill and could not come out, then also they may send a message. In this case, neither the President nor the Vice-President had any of those issues, still they sent their messages to be read by the Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, only because they were not invited to the inauguration to give their message directly.

Personally, it is insulting for me, if someone says, "We are conducting an event. You do not come to the event. But, give me your message for the event." 

Since, Parliament consists of Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha, Lok Sabha speaker is given prominent importance and he is there at the main inauguration. But, the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha is not there. Because, the Vice-President is the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha. If he is invited, then he should do the inauguration and not the Prime Minister, since, Vice-President is above in the protocol to the Prime Minister. So, the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha was also sidelined, and the Deputy Chairman was invited in his place. 

I head a house, but I am not invited to the inauguration of the house that I head. But, my deputy is invited and he is given prominent importance to sit on the podium. 

Since Nehru's time, there have been a lot of differences between the Prime Ministers and Presidents. But, I am not sure whether any other President or Vice-President were insulted this way. 

Buying Vegetables at High Price

After a long long time, I looked at the price tag in a vegetable shop and decided whether to buy or not based on the price.

Many years back, I read the following quote.

When do you realize you are rich?

When you buy without looking at the price tag.

Later I realized that I was rich, because I was not looking at the price tag while I was buying vegetables. [Of course, it is not the case when I go to any other store other than vegetable shops.]

In recent times, there were a couple of instances when I felt like I should have looked at the price before buying. If I had looked at the price before buying, I would not have bought those. First instance was during the lockdown in the first wave of Corona, and the second instance was before the lockdown during the second wave of Corona. At that time, the prices of a few vegetables were very high, and if I had known the prices before, I would not have bought those. 

Sometime back, when there were floods, I consciously looked at the price of the vegetables, and did not buy a few vegetables (or bought less quantity) at a higher price. That was almost the first instance in many many years, when I decided to reduce the consumption of vegetables in the food because of the higher price.

It is not because I am having financial problems. It is because I did not want my consumption to affect the prices. 

Most of the time, the prices are decided by the demand and supply. When there is more demand and less supply, the prices would increase. When there is less demand and more supply, the prices would decrease.

If the price is increasing, it means there is more demand and less supply. Now, if I go and buy everything that I need without worrying about the price, the supply would reduce further, and the mismatch between demand and supply would increase even further causing the prices to increase further. 

I did not want to increase the prices because of my consumption. So, whenever there is a sudden rise in prices of something, I am trying to reduce the consumption of that. 

Finding the people who did not vote for his party

Eventhough, there were many things that I do not like about Y.S.Jagan Mohan Reddy, I could not stop appreciating his technical skills.

In the recent MLC elections in the MLAs quota, YSRCP found the people who did not vote for them. 

In India, all the elections are conducted in secret. When a person is voting, he/she is not supposed to show the vote to anyone. In the recent MLC elections, the MLAs did not show their vote to anyone. Still, YSRCP found their MLAs who did not vote for them.

Unlike regular elections that are conducted for the general public, in the elections for the upper house and president, one has to give the ranking of the candidates. The candidates would be selected by proportional representation. 

In this particular case, since there was only one extra candidate than the no.of seats, in general, only the first and second choices of each vote would have impact, and other choices would not have any impact.

What YSRCP did was, it gave unique choices to each of their MLAs for all the options. Each MLA is supposed to vote exactly by the rankings that were given to him/her. 

Eventhough, the MLA is not going to show the vote during the counting, the counting agent can view the ballot paper and they have noted down the rankings for each ballet paper. They got all the rankings of all the ballot papers, matched with the expected rankings of their MLAs, and checked which ones were missing. From that, they found the MLAs who did not vote for their party and they were expelled from the party. 

Subsidies vs Incentives

In Jan 2016, Modi questioned, why benefits given to poor people are called subsidies, and why benefits given to rich, like exemption on dividends and long term capital gains are called as incentives?

When something is given from the treasury of the government, that is called subsidy. 

When something may or may not come to the treasury, and the Government decides to not take it, it is called incentive. 

When the government removes subsidies, the government will save the equivalent money in their treasury. 

But, when the government removes incentives, they may not save the equivalent money. Some businesses or transactions might be running only because of that incentive. Once the incentive is gone, they may not do that business or transaction. The resultant money that the government would get after removing an incentive is always less than the incentive amount that the government projects. 

Exemption on dividends and long term capital gains were not at all incentives. It is just that they were taxed in a different way. 

Companies pay tax on their profits. After paying the tax, they used to pay dividend distribution tax again, and then they distribute the dividend. Once the dividend comes to the investor, the investor does not need to pay any tax on that [It was already taxed twice.] Modi called it an incentive, because you are not paying the tax third time [For the exact same amount which is already taxed twice].

Couple of years back, Modi's government removed the dividend distribution tax and made the dividend as taxable for the investor. Dividend is coming out of the profit that the company made. Company already paid the tax on the profit that it got. You are paying the tax a second time, because it changed hands. 

Before 2004, Long term capital gains in equity were not exempted from income tax. After Chidambaram became finance minister, he exempted tax on the long term capital gains in equity, and introduced securities transaction tax. 

Modi removed the exemption on the long term capital gains in equity and kept the securities transaction tax. [Again double taxation].