Nationalist Exhortations

A piece of plastic has changed my life. I am talking about an ATM card, courtesy HDFC Bank. The glorious uncertainty has gone out of banking. Before computerisation, banks used to have passbooks. I still remember the thrill when one successfully got ones passbook updated. You donned your best smile, you cajoled and pleaded with the clerk, you told him that he was the cats whiskers and the bank wouldnt survive without him. If that put him in a good mood, you got your passbook updated. If not, you had to come back after a few days. Then came computerisation. With a passbook you got the right balance, after updating. Not so with computerisation. At least, not in my public sector bank. The computers are down half the time. But my bank never tells me that. Instead, it gives me a completely fictitious balance. At random. Even when the computers are not down, my bank insists that it can only give me the statement as on the last day of the month. Not on any other date. This makes life gloriously stochastic. You never know how much money you have in the bank.

 

Determinism is such a bore. Add to that the uncertainty when you withdraw money from the bank. How many torn notes will be there? How many will have to be carefully spliced with a cellotape? Will I have to wait for a power cut to pass on a note to an unsuspecting shopkeeper? The ATM has taken all this pleasure and excitement out of my life. The notes are crisp. (The first time I withdrew some money through the ATM, I though the notes were counterfeit.) The balance is instantaneously obtained. Therein lies the problem. If you havent wasted one hour, you dont feel that you have been to the bank.

I read a statement by a leader of the bank unions. He was complaining about ATMs. He is right about plastic cards. They should be banned. Plastic pollutes the environment. Computerisation and technology bring labour redundancy. For example, I am now unemployed two hours every week, the time I used to spend at the bank earlier.

With ATMs around, people who stapled all those notes together will lose their jobs. Ditto for those who made a living out of unstapling them. Then there are touts you find in front of the Reserve Bank, changing mutilated notes for a commission. What about them? Stapler manufacturers are bound to suffer. I bet the manufacture of staplers is reserved for the small-scale sector. The union official also made the point that foreign banks are not going to take ATMs down to the rural sector. A valid point that. The rural masses are backward and poor, even if they dont realise it themselves. The rural marketing revolution of the 1980s would never have taken off had the rural masses been rational and accepted the premise that they were meant to be poor. Multinationals would not have benefited. However, I do think that union officials should have ATM cards. They can spend more time weeping about the poor then. But note that my piece of plastic is not from a foreign bank. I have followed Mr Ibrahims exhortations about being a nationalist.

It is far better to be exploited by an Indian company. Computers are a case in point. Even if the kit is foreign, the screwdriver is Indian. Take Pertech Computers Ltd (PCL). Newspapers are replete with complaints about PCL victims. People dont get their computers on time, even though the money is taken in advance. When they want their money back, nothing happens. (I had a similar problem with Computer Land, dealers for Compaq). Then there is PAL and the question of refunding booking amounts on cancelled Uno bookings. Consumers who desire such elitist items deserve to be exploited. Unfortunately, there are a few misguided souls who take the issue to the consumer courts and courts rule in their favour. But as we all know, judicial activism is responsible for many of Indias problems.

This business about companies being prompt when taking the consumers money and casual when returning it, is not specific to Indian companies. (In all fairness, one should point out that public sector banks have not been keen to take your money either.) Writing in these columns, Bhaskar Dutta cited the example of Citibank. That is precisely the reason why banks like Citibank should not be allowed. These multinationals exploit the Indian consumer and feather their own nests.

But when Indian companies exploit the consumer, that is in public interest. Why dont Indian companies adhere to delivery schedules? Because they are adhering to delivering schedules in the export market. Why do Indian companies offer bad quality in the domestic market? Because better quality items have to be exported. The tax on the consumer is thus an indirect way of subsidising exports. Before Manmohan Singh unleashed the reforms, this principle was understood. Wasnt the Indian consumer happy with export rejects? But despite writing a dissertation on Indias exports, Manmohan Singh failed to understand this basic principle. He brought down import duties, liberalised foreign investment norms and deluged India with foreign goodies.

Presumably, American companies behave in the same fashion and reserve better products for the global market. Their better quality products are thus dumped into India. So the competition is naturally unfair and playing fields are not level. Slow moving vehicles drive on the left-hand side of the road and the Left is therefore trying its best to slow down reforms. If they dont succeed, we need a second line of defence. This explains the exhortation. Consumers of India unite. Be nationalists. You have to wear these chains in public interest.