Ban online sale on experimental basis
Presently every market of wholesale or retail commodities is undergoing a heavy dose of economic recession with the quantum of business declining sharply. Even wholesale medicine-market in Bhagirath Palace (Delhi) is facing a steep fall in sales as if people do not fall sick. Fall in sales results in the direct and indirect business of others like tea-vendors etc because their sale is also dependent on the footfall of customers. All this has further generated unemployment because traders now have minimum staff and shunting out of surplus staff from employment.
Apart from other factors, one of the main reasons for the fall in business is fast-growing trend of on-line sale of commodities. No trader is able to understand how such abnormal heavy discounts are possible on on-line sale. Wholesale-traders of medicines normally giving 20 per cent discount on branded medicines have now started giving 22 per cent discount to meet big challenge of on-line sale where heavy discounts of 25-30 per cent is being given bearing the heavy cost of packing and home-delivery of medicines even though purchased in small amounts like of rupees 500. No wholesale-trader is able to understand the economy of on-line sale.
Union government should ban on-line sale at least on an experimental basis to give a breather for normal trade-activities and regenerating employment in private-sector. Otherwise also on-line sale at times results in banking-frauds.
Subhash Chandra Agrawal
East Indians should learn from the Goans
It is very disgusting that when a person dies in an East Indian Catholic family, tea, snacks (sandwiches, pattices, and cakes) and soft drinks are served to the people at the graveyard after the burial. Then the people who have attended the funeral come to the house of the deceased member where again snacks, soft drinks, alcohol, and dinner is served. This is ridiculous! We are supposed to be mourning for the deceased member of our family but instead of mourning, we are having a grand party. Goans, Mangaloreans and other Christian communities do not do all this; it is only the East Indians who do it. We East Indians should learn from the Goans, Mangaloreans, and other Christian communities and bury the dead member of our family with respect instead of having a grand party after the funeral.
Then again after the month’s mind Mass and after the 1st anniversary Mass, snacks and lunch just like that of a wedding are served to neighbours, relatives and close friends either at home or in the church hall.
With all this eating, drinking and merry-making, I don’t think the soul of the deceased member will rest in peace.
P.S.: The East Indians are a community of Roman Catholics who are the original inhabitants of Mumbai. They got their name from the East India Company of the British who had converted a large number of local Marathi-speaking people to Christianity.
Jubel D’Cruz
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
