Festival on the Mind

So, the festive season is here again and soon the markets will be flooded with attractive offers. All marketing books say that the best time to sell anything in India is the festive season that begins before Diwali. This is the time for brands and retailers to float special schemes, offer attractive discounts and lure as many customers as they can. Apparently, this is also the time when some unscrupulous business minds see an opportunity to indulge in malpractices to cash in on the demand. Superficial discounts

Not all discounts are real. If you prepare a list of what you intend to buy and check their prices right now and compare the same during the festive season, you will realize that some offers are bogus, some are a bit too hyped, and only a very few are genuine. Even the genuine discounts are not always on fresh stocks – these are on stuff that the store wants to get rid of. Spurious sweets

Every Diwali, the demand for sweets grows manifold and so does the demand for khoa (a milk product similar to ricotta cheese), which is the base ingredient for the majority of sweets. You may be surprised to know how many tonnes of spurious khoa – made of grease and potatoes – reach markets through illegal channels during the season. So, double-check the quality of the sweets you buy; where possible, buy from your trusted sweetmeat shops only. Fakes/replicas/smuggled goods

Hundreds of ungraded, illegally manufactured or smuggled goods reach retailers and roadside vendors. These products are sold at rock-bottom prices, and while all of them disturb the market decorum, some can be dangerous too. For example, most of those cheap decorative lights have poor-quality wiring that can catch fire any moment, while cheap candles burn out in seconds and emit hazardous fumes while burning. Fireworks

While we at Consumer Voice discourage buying and lighting of firecrackers for various reasons including child labour and pollution, if you still want to buy some, do that from licensed retailers. Hundreds of hoarders stock firecrackers in risky and vulnerable conditions without legal permissions. All those incidents of fire at markets and residential neighbourhoods happen because of these criminal hoarders, who apparently evade excise and taxes and are able to sell at much cheaper rates. Some low-grade crackers are risky as they may not burst in right proportions, causing burning hazards. Gifting

Year after year, large corporate houses to the poorest of families together spend millions on Diwali gifts. While the practice of gifting opens up branding and marketing avenues for brands, it comes as a social obligation on middleclass families and they end up spending not just on buying gifts but also on commuting to deliver those gifts. Is that really needed? Is it our social custom or is it a perception created by marketers, should be food for thought for all of us. Padma Joint editor