Budget airlines have become plunderers in the skies, running amok, selling everything – exorbitant fares, printed tickets, baggage, seats, leg space, and food, in the name of “open skies policy”, “deregulation”, and “surge pricing”. Naked, unfettered extortion is happening, making the lives of thousands of travellers including students a plain misery.
India is a nation that is quick to adapt all regressive Western practices. One such practice imbibed by the airline, railway, and taxi network is ‘surge pricing’. This is the practice of hiking the standard prices of goods and services to high levels, citing greater demand. The individual consumers do not get to know the quantum of the demand level, as there is zero transparency. The complete anonymity that online transactions guarantee makes it a secret exercise by a coterie of airline officials to jack up prices abnormally. The holiday season, festival season, and student admission season, all witness manipulated soaring airfares. Currently, many routes in India are witnessing a 4 to 6 times abnormal hike in fares.
There are millions of travellers proceeding to Gulf countries and Europe, and vice versa, but exorbitant hikes in airfare are proving to be beyond the reach of ordinary people. Voracious greed for profiteering is propelling ticket fares to dizzying heights. With zero accountability of any kind and hardly any competitors, the air pirates are engaged in a daily price-hike game. The government and the Ministry of Civil Aviation are helpless spectators, watching the everyday game of price hikes, now restricted to just two major airlines. One also wonders as to why the Government of India is maintaining a full-fledged Ministry of Civil Aviation along with a battery of bureaucrats.
Unable to instil any sense in this every-minute game of price-hike, the Kerala government has taken a bold decision to launch a ship service with the cooperation of the Department of Non-Resident Keralites’ Affairs (NORKA), the official body of the diaspora of Kerala ethnicity. The Kerala government has allocated Rs 15 crore for this proposed venture. However, this project will not have any effect on the domestic flight sector and will only have a marginal impact on the Gulf sector, as and when the shipping service commences.
The Government of India can initiate effective steps to control the manipulated every-minute price hike by simply curtailing the travel plans of ministers and bureaucrats who constitute a major chunk of daily travellers. By switching over to online meetings, much unwanted expenditure can be reined in. It is also pointless in wasting taxpayers’ money on abnormal airfare. Similarly, the government should not permit any Leave Travel Concession (LTC) and Home Travel Concession (HTC) to employees when fares go beyond an optimal level. Just by simply regulating the air travel of bureaucrats and their families, the market can be influenced to keep fares within the Lakshman Rekha.
The government is also guilty of adopting this obnoxious practice of ‘surge pricing’ in the railway sector. Many train fares are unaffordable for the common man as the dubious practice of ‘surge pricing’ is being resorted to for augmenting revenue. Here also, by simply regulating the travels of bureaucrats, and LTC, HTC, fares shooting into top gear can be controlled.
This unethical practice of ‘surge pricing’ has spread to taxi aggregators, hotels, and private inter-state bus operators, causing great hardship to commuters, tourists, and students. Imagine the plight of the common man if restaurants, city bus services, autorickshaw services, cinema theatres, electricity, and water charges, are going to indulge in ‘surge pricing’. The nation would be thrown into utter crisis and set the momentum for a revolution by the common people.
The government cannot plead helplessness in controlling the usurious practice of ‘surge pricing’, as it is definitely within its realm to frame rules and regulations prohibiting this egregious practice. Delhi and Karnataka had banned ‘surge pricing’ in 2016 by taxi aggregator companies. In October 2022, the Karnataka government had taken a radical step to eradicate the issue of surge prices on popular cab platforms such as Ola, Uber, and Rapido by calling for a complete discontinuation of autos from these apps, as there was rising dissent against surge prices in Bengaluru’s mobility environment. The Karnataka State Transport Department clarified that the auto services cannot charge passengers more than the fare prescribed by the government, which is what greedy aggregators were doing. In 2016 the Karnataka High Court also upheld rules framed by the state government to regulate fares by taxi aggregators, indulging in ‘surge pricing’.
The Government of India needs to do something along similar lines to control the spiralling domestic and international airfare. Meanwhile, passengers can teach these greedy operators a simple lesson. When the aircraft lands at any destination, the cabin crew goes around instructing passengers to close the window shades. If none of their services are free, why should passengers be asked to provide free service for them? Let them employ window-closers.
The author is IRS (Rtd), Ph.D. (Narcotics), Former Director General, National Academy of Customs, Indirect Taxes & Narcotics (NACIN). Views expressed are personal.
Comments
0 comment