Be wise consumer in India!!!

 1.consumer movement made us Lakshadhish :

We joined Mumbai Grahak Panchayat as a consumer in 1984, every year we bought goods worth Rs.1000/- through Mumbai Grahak Panchayat.called 20,000 families are the members of Mumbai Grahak Panchayat. The monthly requirement of all goods of all families are Written down together & then they are purchased from producers or wholesale market.So we get the goods at manufacturer’s price or wholesale price which is 25% to 50% less than market. If you buy goods of Rs.1000 per month so you save at least 250 per month. After joining MGP we opened one PPF account The money we saved was put in that account . In 1997 we went to USA that time this account had one lakh rupees.which financed the trip .. Thus MGP and consumer movement made us Lakshadhish at Zero investment. Let us do this in our town . We can follow MGP way of goods distribution & make everybody lakshydhish. Just by becoming member of consumer movement. What MGP does for more than last 25 years is as follows. Every month we collect list of what people need For their house. and buy those goods together. This is internationally acclaimed. Zimbabwe now follows MGPs model. Details can be obtained by MGP.Thus everybody can became Rich & get 5 star, good quality adulteration free goods.

2. Story of buying fridge at Dealer price and saving few thousand per purchase :

Story of buying fridge at Dealer price and saving few thousand per purchase. I wanted to buy a 300litre fridge in 1986. I t cost Rs.10,000 then. But Gem refrigerators had an arrangement with Mumbai Grahak Panchayat . So all members of Mumbai Grahak Panchayat got all the goods of Gem Refrigerators at Dealer price or Wholesale price. Thus I got a 300 lire fridge at the cost of 165 litre fridge.This can be done by all the consumer organizations. White goods like fridge T.V. are expensive. The service is provided by the respective companies. 3. We are consumer friendly and no more arrogant.Thanks to lessons learned in consumer movement. 2. Baby’s Marriage. Baby is our daughter her marriage is on 1/4/2005 & You all are invited. I want to tell you the amusing story of how her marriage was fixed. Baby is like any other ordinary girl, non working woman so we could not get a match,.Finally we decided that we will pay Dowry, & get her one husband. Baby said,”Since you pay the money & buy the husband then I am the consumer & husband is the commodity.Then I have a right to choose.So you must give advertisement & I will screen the forms & I will take the interview. I have a right to choose. I have a right to get the Husband at fair price.So I will negotiate the Dowry. Consumer has a right to safe commodity so the husband must be safe he must not be injurious. You must give the guarantee. He must be long lasting, He must be there in my daughter’s marriage. If he has any bad habbit he will die soon. So I do not want the husband who is drinks liquor or one who has any bad habbits. If a product is bad company repairs or replaces it.I want similar assurance. With God’s grace we got such a good boy, the marriage is on 1/4/2005.[ April fool day.] So you are all invited. How this story was born? Consumer movement education is given in 9th standard. So our people were teaching 9th slandered boys and girls about consumer movement & rights of consumer. Students were bored. So finally I thought of this story. I told this story. All were laughing.The girls were laughing the boys were laughing.They enjoyed & they understood the rights of consumer. Right to choose, Right to fair price, Right to complaint, Right to service & repairs & replacement.

3. Mobile Insurance :

BPL & one Nationalized insured company together insured my mobile instrument against loss & took Rs.300. Unfortunately my mobile was stolen.So I complete all the formalities & informed them In July 2003.It is 14 months now after communicating many times nothing has happened. My lesson is that insurance companies only take premiums & they do their best to avoid payments & single person cannot fight. Multinational insurance companies are stronger than Govt. of India & their annual budget are bigger than government of India. So to fight against then we have to be as strong as they are. If their executives & officers have Laptops & fly by air & can buy biggest Lawyers, we too shoud. How can you raise the money ?. If you have the distribution system like MGP. You can raise your money & your association can become self-sufficient to do this. ask MGP.

4. Coconut oil ½ kg. At Rs25 :

I have 30 staff member’s working with me & I always told them to joint MGP but nobody listened. Once I bought 30 Half liter coconut oils bottles.The printed price was Rs.65/- But we received them at Rs.25 each. Because we buy 25,000 bottle at one time so we got one bottle at Rs.25/- I gave it to my staff as a Gift, When they saw that each bottle with M.R.P. of.65. Given to them at Rs.25, that impressed them. They all have joined MGP. Do it in your place. Thus every family saving 20% money every month on their expenses.Make them rich.

5. Story of worms’ medicine Albendazole :

Everybody knows that children get worms and Stomach pain.They are given worms medicine. The worms medicine tablet is called as Albendazole . all of us buy one tablet for Rs. 18 to 20 Rupees.You will be surprised to know [ this is available in the internet] that Tamilnadu Govt. gets it at 85 paise & all other state get it for same price & doctors get it for 1 or 2 Rupees .This is price difference of 2000 %. If we have our consumer shop for medicine & we asked our consumer to buy this medical shop then we can give this Albendazole medicine at 1 or 2 Rupee & still saved 18 Rupees. Same is true of all drugs.In India and all over the world. International studies are going on & MGP is a part of it. They show that the same medicine [ like blood pressure medicine or Diabetic medicine which has to be taken for lifetime] the company which discovers that medicine suppose if they sale it for Rs.10 some companies sale it for Rs.12, some sale it from Rs.4/- & some for Rs.2/-also. So consumer Group should start their own chemist shop & give benefit to their own consumer. So we should have a medicine distribution network & we should go for generic medicine. When Albendazole is sold as Albendazole it is sold for 1 or 2 Rupees. But when it is sold by a brand name of the standard company it is sold for 20 Rupees. So let’s not go for brand name, but buy medicine by its generic name from a standard company. We still can get it for Rs.2/- & its true for all the medicine. We are at Mumbai trying to establish such medicine-marketing network. Where the city is small everybody can come & take the medicine Where the city is big we can courier & get it. So we have to employee one B-farms graduate & one you have to take permission from FDA, which everybody gets,
Story of Amruta. A girl called Amruta had a ulcer in the throat as a doctor I gave her penicillin and her mother was a nurse in the local hospital. I had given penicillin three times a day to kill the germs causing ulcer and paracetamol to be given if child has fever As a doctor I gave her medicine penicillin which kills the germs of causing illness to be given 3 times & I also asked to give paracetamol if child had fever. After two days child had developed pneumonia and was admitted.Fortunately child recovered. I asked the mother what went wrong because I had given correct medicine. She said” I gave paracetamol three times.” She had wrongly given the fever removing medicine paracetamol three times. So the child never had fever & she had never given the penicillin .She thought penicillin was to be given in case of fever.So she never give the true medicine. Thus then I realized that even if the mother is nurse if the names are written in English language errors can happened. Since that day we are campaigning that all medicine must carry the brand name in the all languages. One rupees note one rupees written in 15 languages in one thumb area. India buys medicine of 10,000 crore rupees every year & we can easily put names in many languages on all medicine. This must happen. Every day 10,000 Children die. Research shows that only 35% medicine properly is utilized, rest medicine goes waste because of errors. If the medicine are written in peoples language we can easily save many more lives at zero extra cost. This must happen. We started working 1988 & Now 110 companies Put names in Hindi Devangiri so at least half the India can now read& you must ask to your doctor to write in Hindi or Devangiri. In multi lingual India all items must carry multi lingual names.

6. Story of success in medication :

One lakh people die on the road every year in this country. One of the reasons is that all the road signs are in English & only 6% people read English & 94 % people cannot read road signs so they make mistake & they die. So it is the question of right to survive & right to information, right to read the signs .We have right to information . so all the roads must be on the language of the state. Maximum people dying in road accidents are those who walk by the side of the road. T]Many of them can not read the number plate of the vehicle that hurts them, as it is written in English. The number plate on each vehicle must be also in the official language of that state.That platae is made for identifying a vehicle. It is not only for R.T.O. Every sovereign citizen must be able to read it. In multi lingual India the vehicle number plate must be in the language of that state. It may additionally be in Hindi or English. { The consumer must be able to read the number of vehicle that sent him to heaven.} members of parliament from Tamilnadu rightly asked for Tamil road signs.Tamilnadu health minister rightly asked for giving education inmedical colleges in Tamil. There are two mobile companies. One has link in all state capitals but has no link in all villages & towns of our state. English is like this mobile company. Another mobile company had all the link in towns but not in other state capital in India. Our mother tongue is like this second company To reach our state use mother tongue. And use English for interstate communication. So every education must be available in every language of our state that will create good citizen, good consumers, good Doctors , good engineers & we will have less consumer cases & we also must educate all over people in 15 Indian languages.

7. Story of Mahananda milk :

While studying adulteration of milk MGP was surprise to see that there are 50 brands in Mumbai which are created by making small changes the name of popular name Mahananda. Sometimes the ‘A’ is missing , sometimes the ‘N’ is missing. & poor people cannot read the English name. If this name is written in Hindi or Marathi or Gujarati because maximum people Marathi & Gujarati there, & every brand name is written in 15 languages then such cheating cannot happen. So to eliminate cheating we must ask the all brand names tobe in 15 languages. Those who do not like this should do business in England. English name promote cheating. When we send our child in shop the price is written in English Rs.2.50 paise & shopkeeper take the Rs.3/- because the poor person cannot read So price must be written in the language of state.We must ensure that in every state one cannot sale the goods unless you print the name price & the consumer instruction how to use it in the local languages.

8. Story of Glaxo :

Glaxo India was found selling expired medicines. So MGP went to court & applied against it & Glaxo was punished. This happened because the activists of MGP they were strong. No body could scare them, No body could purchase them. Our association people must be strong we have to built characters , our workers should be strong , fearless & we must have enough money to buy good advocate that against fight the strong companies.

9. Story of Adulteration of Petrol in Maharashtra :

Recently Minister told Maharashtra assembly that government can not detect or stop adulteration in petrol as the adulterators have purchased everyone including the testing labs. We have to have our own testing lab. We need people,volunteer who can not be purchased or scared.

10. The story of Indian Consumer and consumer movement :

India is a vast country with 103 crore of people and 15 major languages. Less than 1 % Indians are members of consumer movement. Every year 2 crore children are born. They are added to the group of people not knowing anything a bout consumer movement. Thus every day and every year absolute number of people not knowing consumer movement is growing. To reach 103 crore Indians in 15 language we all have to

1. Work together,
2. Go Hightech: Empower our volunteers with tool like laptop, air travel,internet to fight when needed against big companies multinatinals when needed, whose annual budgets are bigger than India’s annual budget.
3. Become strong ,powerful resourceful and Moneyed to fight when needed against big companies like multinatinals when needed, whose annual budgets are bigger than India’s annual budget.
4. Use mass media. Mass media is the open university that educates all Indians.
5. Experience from Brazil Chili,Egypt while educating people about giving plenty of liquids in diarrrhoea patients in the form of O.R.S. [oral rehydration solution] shows the effective reach of media as follows.
1.Electronic media T.V. [all channels giving message at the same time ] About 20 % Radio About 15 %
2. Print media About 10 % [All newspapers & periodicals giving message at the same time]
3. Gate meeting/corner meetings public speeches About 1
4. person to person communication : No impact on society.
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All media working together reach is 45 %
[*Internet was not born then.]
Even if we use all the media the same time we do not real 55 % people.]
So we have to use all the media together again and again.
Lessons of 2001 census.
Visit website of census of India.
How many people know well which language?
% people knowing the language Name of the language
6% English.
> 8 % Marathi
> 8 % Telugu
.> 9% Bangali
> 9 % Urdu
> 45 % Hindi
Lesson:
English is good for inter state communication. But it fails to reach 94 % Indians. [No wonder Hindi Aaj tak has more viewers that English news channels. But to reach all the people you must become multilingual.] You may be a great English writer but for 94 % Indians you do not exist.
Survey of Indian news papers show that the largest selling English news paper Times of India is 10 th largest newspaper of India
Dainik Bhaskar [Hindi]
Malyalam Manorama [Malayalam]
Lokmat [ Marathi. ]
And 9 more dailies sell more than English Times of India. India became free because Mahatma Gandhi, Lokmanya Tilak,the founder of Malayalam Manorama, and other great leaders leaders started their newspapers in languages of the people and won the war against Britishers. We have to fight the war against consumer illiteracy. We need to take the help of media.