Chapter 4
Every one is creating poverty
Individuals, groups of individuals and organisation work hard, all the time, to take away the money as much money they could from those interacting with them.
Governments at various level keeps the tax rate increasing year after year. People have no way to question what they get in return. Taxing is the right of those whom we elected. There is no prescribed limit.
Transporters keep increasing the fare every year. That is because they can charge we have no escape. We experience that during the festival season when more people need to travel, facility to travel is not increased instead the fare is increased abruptly.
Traders and manufacturers have a free run in charging their clients. The price of most Industrial goods, pharma companies fleece as much as they please.
Corporate hospitals are happy with customers with health insurance. Suggest surgery to any disease.
Insurance is a product. Insurance companies have maximum consumer complaints, Google for “Insurance Litigations”. The companies invariably try to find a reason not to deliver insured amount to its clients.
Life Insurance Corporation has a worth exceeding 15 Lakh Crores. Insurance product is bought by people with fear of death. The fear is exploited. Inflation is a boon to insurance companies.
Those ignorant of economic basics are victims of insurance.
Insurance companies promise a lot but have wild conditions in Small print. The number denial of claims are huge and consumer courts are full with insurance clients.
Those who have not understood the impact of inflation becomes victims of insurance companies. Become poor faster.
In high inflation economies, buying power of money reduces fast every year. Insurance companies offer Crores of return after 20 years for investment in tens of thousand. Such schemes attract the middle class who are victimized.
Your doctors may be contributing to you poverty:
There are three categories of medicines. Generic, branded and patented.
All the three categories have same effects and side effects . But they but priced differently.
The Doctors prescribing these medicines get the huge cut from the pharmacists.
The crooked among doctors prescribe the patented medicine which costs the highest instead of the generic which is the lowest.
(Only the West Bengal Govt ordered physicians working in state run hospitals to prescribe only generic medicine. This angered pharmacists who stage a huge public protests against government, recently).
The knowledgeable citizen:
1. is aware of existence of the three categories of drugs and their price difference.
2. knows to use google and internet.
3. He can find the name of the generic medicine, buy and use it instead of the expensive patented medicine.
Here goes a real life story
(The event described in this story took place in a Big city in Andhra Pradesh, some twenty years ago).
It was a fairly large colony of independent houses. The residents, by and large, belonged to a couple of prosperous districts of that state.
People of these districts are known for hard work, risk-taking and god fearing.
A close friend and colleague, wanted to share a good news with me. Reached my table in the first hour of the day. The good news was that a shop without any board or publicity is started in the colony where he lives.
I replied my friend don’t worry, within six months he would vacate it. If the intention of the promoter was mere business, he would start with a fanfare. He would have a short term goal. Accomplish and vanish.
Otherwise he would put up a large sign board and big publicity. But, my friend was not convinced. But continued. He has a scheme! “You choose a product. Pay half of it in three instalment. At the end of three months the product would be yours”.
Well, the shop may run for nine months if not six months. My friend became restless. He demanded to know how I came to that conclusion. I replied him, “in the first three months the sale would be for small products”. The shop would buy and keep the product in his show case. Seeing that, a lot of people would come from outside the city. One day he will leave the shop with goods and vanish into thin air, not to be traced .
My friend replied that it was not possible. He added that they opted for refrigerator. The shopkeeper already bought and kept it in the shop with a placard mentioning the name of the person who has ordered for it and the address etc.
First day of the fourth month, my friend invited me to join the celebrations on the eve of delivery of promised goods at half price. I took the opportunity to talk to the shop keeper. He wore very expensive cloth and a few gold chains to demonstrate his affluence and that invariably won the trust of the people.
It was not very difficult to deduce that he never went to school. I enquired how he managed to sell goods at half the price? He said, it was his business secret.
Then, in a low voice, murmured, they financed smuggling activities. I asked him, what if I informed cops about your smuggling activities.
He said with confidence that it is taken care of by political bosses and that he had nothing to fear. My friend got his refrigerator, at half the market price. We had a fine evening celebrating the windfall gain with sweets and samosa.
I warned my friend that he should be content and not venture into investment any more. Also I asked him not to inform his friends and relatives in his native place about the great deal. He promised, he would keep quite.
All his neighbour who got their dream goods at half prize went crazy and informed friends and relatives in their native towns and villages. They broke their fix-deposit, sold their gold and camped in the colony for weeks. Soon the scheme was extended to gold and silver besides white goods.
Guests returned to their native. The shop keeper filled his shop with white goods with tags of owner.
A long list of people and their investment for Gold, decorated the shop. Those who lived in the colony made visiting the shop and witnessing the growth of their wealth as their pass time.
The booking continued and goods were delivered in the next three months, when the number of new bookings came down gradually. Suddenly some day, the shop was not opened. People waited for a couple of days with a hope the owner might be unwell and come back some day soon. There was no news of the shop keepers returning to the shop.
Now the people from the colony shifted their attendance to Police station nearby.
My friend thanked me for my advise not to indulge in further transactions with the shop keeper.
The unlettered two villagers, who started the great scheme made a couple of Crores of rupees effortlessly in just seven months.
The victims are educated wage earners.
The education did not give knowledge to students. Both educated and uneducated are equally vulnerable for exploitation in any society.