By Dr. K. Javeed Nayeem, MD
Very recently, I was more than a little distressed to read in my newspaper that with the surge in demand by eager passengers, wanting to travel to participate in the ongoing Kumbh Mela, the air fares from Hyderabad to Prayagraj have gone up to Rs 1.2 lakh per ticket.
Knowing things as we know, the situation would certainly be the same for this now much-sought-after destination, from every other city across the country. And, this astronomically hiked fare is for a journey that otherwise used to very often cost as less as Rs. 3,500 during normal times. Now, this is for a flying destination of just 970 kilometres!
We can also expect the same trend when it comes to food and accommodation in and around the place of pilgrimage. The airline and hotel industries call this practice of constantly varying their tariff by the fancy name of ‘Dynamic Pricing’ and justify it too, as a fair means of keeping their trade viable and out of the red. Thus, they constantly keep adjusting ticket and accommodation prices based on some real-time factors like demand, destination, competition, seasonality and the time of booking, allowing themselves to maximise their revenue. A clear case of making hay while the sun shines!
To a certain extent, this may seem quite logical and fair too, because they can increase their occupancy during lean times by lowering their tariff and encouraging more people to make use of their services, which otherwise would be grossly underutilised. It’s an attempt to earn something instead of nothing, with nothing being very wrong in it. It is like the long prevailing and universal practice of hotels in almost all tourist destinations, having two different tariffs for the lean and the peak seasons.
The fairness here lies in the fact that these two varying ranges are almost fixed with variability being easily predictable to anyone making travel plans, even at reasonably short notice. But when the difference is made astronomical, with the clear and very obvious motive of exploiting the situation, it becomes very unfair. It is nothing different from traders who hoard goods, procured at low costs during times of plenty and then sell them at very high costs during times of scarcity, to make huge profits. This goes by the very black name of black marketing or profiteering and it has always been condemned.
A second very dirty but very prevalent example of a similar practice, is of unlicensed money lenders, who give loans, often against security, to needy persons and charge them unimaginably high rates of interest, which very often break their business and backs and wipe out the lives of the borrowers and their families too.
The result of this despicable practice, we see all over the country, in the widespread spate of suicides by farmers, petty traders, daily wage earners and even the jobless that we read of, ad nauseam. They would have borrowed this money out of sheer helplessness, to tide over their daily needs, during their frequent incomeless periods, and some exigencies and emergencies, like the marriages of their children or the illnesses of their loved ones.
A good many of the people who resort to this desperate measure, are the ones who do not qualify to get loans easily from banks. It is very rightly said that our banks are always eager to give loans to those who do not need them, but very reluctant to give them to those who really need them most! This also explains why only the wealthy and well to do, keep getting unsolicited calls from banks, offering them easy loans, of which they have no need, while the only calls the poor receive constantly, are of demands for repayment!
The government has very rightly banned this hideous practice of profiteering by black-marketing and unlicensed money lending and consequent extortion, by some very strict laws. It is a different matter that these laws only exist on paper and are never implemented, again due to the clout of the traders and money lenders and the helplessness of the people they exploit. But these two practices do stand baptised as illegal, while the very similar and just as ignoble practice of dynamic pricing, resorted to by airlines and hotels, enjoys the label of complete legitimacy, going by the fact that our government has never thought of regulating it, at least to make it less draconian, if not completely illegal.
Their style of functioning is nothing short of unfair exploitation, based on the need of their clients and customers. Where is Rs. 3,500 and where is Rs. 1.2 lakh, just because pilgrims with faith want to travel a mere 1,000 kilometres, in some comfort, to seek some soul satisfaction? Like how there is no ban in our country on the practice of charging a fair margin of profit on traded commodities or a fair rate of interest on loans, why can’t there be a similar fixation of fair ranges of tariff, in the rapidly growing airline and hospitality sector too? Or is this cat too big for our government to bell?
I’ll give you my own interesting experience. My wife and I once missed a flight from Bengaluru to Amritsar, when our departure gate was changed at the last moment and we were left waiting at our original point of embarkation. This was when the innovative ‘Silent airport’ concept had just taken to the air, for reasons which I have still not understood. We had paid about Rs. 4,000 each for our tickets that we had booked about a couple of months ago and we decided to forgo this modest amount and proceed by the next flight.
When we approached the staff of the same airline, explaining our predicament and requesting them to see if we could be accommodated on the next available flight, they oozed charm and said they understood where we stood and would be most willing to help us. We were directed to a pretty lady at the adjacent counter who after blinking her dreamy eyes at us a few times, peered into her computer and said our tickets were available and they would cost us only Rs. 54,000 each. Yes, we heard her right and you read me right too! I blinked my not-so-dreamy eyes and with my best smile, I told her that we were not the least bit interested in flying to Las Vegas and left the place! If this is not exploitation, what else is?
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