Unruly Dashain markets
The two-month stretch starting with Gatasthapana, the first day of Dashain which falls on October 1st this year, is a time of festivities, first with Dashain, soon to be followed by Tihar and Chhat. Businesses around the country witness brisk sells, as people look to stock up on foodstuff, buy new clothes, even new vehicles, or add a new coat of paint on their homes. What people buy, of course, depends on their purchasing power. For some families Dashain might be an opportunity to buy a new car under one of the many eye-catching schemes on offer. For others it might mean an occasion to eat meat, this one time in the entire year. But while people’s incomes and purchasing powers vary, one constant is that this season of festivities they are all likely to be cheated off their hard-earned money. For this is also a time for indiscriminate price-fixing, as sellers look to cash in on increased demand by shamelessly fleecing their customers. Since the market monitoring mechanisms are next to non-existent, consumers will have to rely on their good judgment to protect themselves. But good judgment can take them only so far.
For instance, every year, the government raids many sweet shops for selling substandard edibles and for their unhygienic environments. But the strange thing is that besides a handful of token punishments, done with much fanfare, most of these dishonest shopkeepers are left alone. Or consider the fact that for nearly three million residents of Kathmandu valley, the government has opened just 13 good-value shops, which will be joined by five mobile good-value vans this Dashain. There is no point in opening good-value shops where people can get daily necessities at affordable prices if they have to travel two or three kilometers to procure them. Nor has the government over the years been able to check the trend of almost overnight doubling and trebling prices of clothes and merchandise during the festivals. It’s an open secret that most of the clothes sold in our markets are either local-made or imported on the cheap from Tibet. But the big shopping malls openly sell the same cheap clothes, under different international brand names, for up to four or five times the cost price.
With official inflation touching double digits, but their salaries stagnant, most Nepalis would have witnessed a precipitous decline in their purchasing power. More and more money buys less and less goods. There is now a risk that in a few years time the people at the bottom rungs of the economic ladder will be priced out of the market. This will happen even as there has been a manifold increase in the incomes of a tiny fraction of the population which can visit the plush shopping malls and spend in a single shopping spree what amounts to annual salaries of many Nepalis. Such stark inequality breeds resentment and disrupts social harmony. Reducing it has to be among the government’s long-term goals. In the here and the now, the state must at least create a condition that allows people from every segment of the society to celebrate the festival of their choice with dignity. If only the arbitrary price rises could be controlled this festive season, people will mightily thank their otherwise ‘useless’ government.
The Unequal Balance of Power: Kathmandu's Dual Standard on Rule...
