Wake up Nagpur!

Summers are here and nobody amongst us can live even a moment without electricity! But are most of us aware that our orange city pays the highest for per unit of electricity? Yes, higher than the metropolitan city of Mumbai too. We pay Rs.6.30 per unit of electricity. The highest in the state, followed by Vashi at Rs.6.2 per unit despite out of the top six power distributions in Maharashtra, five being in Vidarbha region alone! Ya you guessed it right. Power from Vidarbha lights Mumbai parties and we bear load shedding. There are villages in Vidarbha where there is electricity only for 5 to 6 hours in a day or even less.

                        This is just the beginning. Not just electricity but even for petrol we Nagpurians pay the highest cost! Even higher than metropolitan cities of Delhi and Mumbai! In a concise manner the petroleum costs per litre at some places in India are as follows-

Delhi	Rs.65.64/litre
Mumbai	Rs.70.66/litre
Goa	Rs.54.96/litre
Rajasthan	Rs.54.56/litre
Bengaluru	Rs.73.51/litre
Kolkata	Rs.70.03/litre
Chennai	Rs.69.75/litre
Pune	Rs.70.98/litre

       AND OUR DEAR NAGPUR PAYS Rs.73.11/Litre!!!  The central government quotes that states of Rajasthan and Goa are suffering the ache of price hike. Aren’t we?? Do we have literal “money plants” growing on orange trees?

I do not think this is a matter of pride at which we can exclaim that look how rich all of us are. This, in fact is a matter of shame that we are being ill treated and prejudiced against and still we choose to keep quiet.                                                        

                           Remember the last time you went to a hotel and enjoyed a cold drink with your meal? But do you remember checking the bill? Nagpur is the only city in India where customers pay from Rs.5 to Rs.11 extra per bottle of cold drink and bottled water as “cooling charges”. The MAXIMUM RETAIL PRICE is truly inclusive of all taxes and it is clearly mentioned on the bottle- “serve chilled” which implies the shopkeeper has to serve it chilled to you AT the MRP. But neither do we care to check that and even if some of us do notice seldom do we question the seller. Why? I do not, at all, say that I am too miserly to spend a5 or 7 Rs. extra but what is wrong is wrong. It is not a question of  large heartedness, it is a question of unethical methods spreading their wings all around us. The discussion shifts from the miserliness or large heartedness to the ethical and the unethical.

                     I distinctly remember a recent family lunch I had at one of the best restaurants of Amravati where we ordered about 4 bottles of cold drink and 3 bottles of Bisleri. The manager charged Rs.7 extra per bottle of cold drink and Rs.5 extra per bottle of Bisleri. I wanted to stand up against it but my dad RIGHTLY warned me against doing so. Yeah he was RIGHT because he did not want me, or for that matter even himself, to mess with the uneducated waiter because the extra bucks did not go into his pocket neither did he have any idea about what the manager was doing!

            But I want all of us to stand up and speak out. I don’t mean mess with the waiter because a complaint at that level makes no sense. Speak to the manager. Every place has a complaint book for the customers. Use your right! Nobody can deny giving you the complaint book. It has to be presented on demand of the customer any time every time whoever the customer might be. Now many of you might be thinking what change will that bring in the completely corrupt Indian system where corruption has seeped deep into the roots….

 Yes. It will bring a change and the change has to start from the grass root level itself. I would not talk in the air and advice you to shout at the petrol pump and protest about the high rate of petrol in Nagpur but at least we can speak against the illicit excess charge on cold drinks and bottled water. Now many of us would wonder whether those dusty complaint books are ever even opened? I would say, ya maybe or maybe not. But just because you think the complaint would never be read that hinders you from registering your grievance? No, that’s a lame excuse for your indifference. How much time does it take to write a few lines? And what consequences does that have? Even if an inch of a change, I say that matters a lot! All of us just practice procrastination and expect that some other person will bring the change and we will just sit and bake in the glory.

    Many of you might have seen the warning on boxes of sweets of a leading sweet maker of the city - consume within 48 hours of purchase or refrigerate etc?

Now I don’t know how many of you will believe the story behind that. Here it goes. Not so long back a man sent an office boy to buy a box of  rasmalai from one of the outlet of this chain, in the evening. The next morning, despite refrigerating the box whole night, there were signs of  decomposed sweet. The man sent the office boy back to ask the manager for an exchange of the box. The pompous manager flatly refused and rather abused the office boy saying “jo karte banta hai kar lo, hum exchange nai karenge.” The man then went to speak to the manager himself, politely telling him the whole story and when the manager refused to budge the man warned him of a report in the FDA. To that the manager quipped “aap jaise bahut aaye aur gaye, kuch bigaad nahi paye”. Then you know the true Nagpurian. He went to the FDA with the box. Lodged a complaint and the FDA officers took the man with them in their own car to this famous outlet, took samples of everything and checked every edible item. Later the owner had to himself call and requested the man to withdraw his complaint but now the man refused to budge and then the owner had to face the music and incur a loss of lakhs of rupees & a dent on his reputation too. One complaint can cause such damage so just give it a thought what would happen if more of us rise for a change?

     All I want to say is nothing will change if we don’t work for it. What if that man had decided to keep quiet? May be one of your acquaintances would have eaten a rotten sweet some time and got ill?

Nothing, just nothing will change unless we have the courage to bring it on! So WAKE UP NAGPUR!!!