Re: The Official Fuel Prices Thread On another note its sad to see that some of us feel the presence of middlemen who provide no real value to any supply chain apart from fattening their own pockets by their very existence, essential and beneficial to the market. All they have done is multiplied the price of commodities 10 times from the cost of production + profits to my end use. They have been manipulating prices and markets for years and have also managed to introduce intelligent sounding arguments which practically mean nothing to confuse the common citizen about the need of their existence. Quote:
Originally Posted by snkjr The power really is in your hands - in your gas card/book entries and the cash receipts that you get for every delivery. | Quote:
Originally Posted by RS_DEL I just asked my wife about this. She orders LPG refills via a telephone # registered with the company's servers on an IVR that is linked to the company's servers. So to me it does seem monitor-able. | Quote:
Originally Posted by apachelongbow As long as you have your gas passbook, and its relevant entries, the distributor cant shunt your subidised cylinder to someone else. He may show any kind of data, however how can he forge entry into the passbook held by you? | Quote:
Originally Posted by mjothi Seriously, I am wondering how many gas dealers are really "updating" your gas book. I have not seen anyone in Bangalore or Chennai atleast. They use to, but now almost nil. They just provide the bill. |
Let me address all the above by demonstrating a simple scenario. At the outset let me tell you that I am very well aware of the current booking process and the flaws in it. Hope no unscrupulous LPG distributor reads this. Currently the phone booking system is the only mass accepted way to book the refills. Most of India is not computer literate so I am not considering the online booking system.
In my household the gas cylinder is in my name so when this system was introduced I registered using my consumer no. and phone no. I was happy with it. I was first scared when my wife could also register with the same consumer no. and her own cell phone no. even though the connection is in my name. Which means anybody who has my consumer no. can make a booking now for a refill against my no. by using a different telephone no. This access control is totally flawed and without fixing this the news of this cylinder limit have the distributors salivating.
Distributor 1 - Consumer 0
Now under this new system lets say I have used only 1 subsidized refill till now. But my corrupt LPG distributor knows he/she can place the order using any telephone no. and he/she does that to order the rest of the 3/4 refills. Since he/she is part of the supply chain system he/she knows when the refill will be allotted and he/she can easily pilfer that in the black market. When this subsidy limit was not there he/she had no incentive to run this process however they did according to newspaper reports I have read. The corrupt distributors currently scan household LPG usage patterns and where they find the households with low usage pattern. They were ordering refills surreptitiously against those households and this was reported in newspapers. This will just now institutionalize this practice but I digress.
Distributor 2 - Consumer 0
I don't get any receipt obviously because that refill was never ordered by me. Receipts are given by distributors.
Distributor 3 - Consumer 0
And as to that simple thing of making an entry in the passbook where that delivery guy puts an illegible signature every time, I am sure if I go to the distributor with my pass book and show him/her missing entries he/she is going to scoff at me and say it was my mistake that entries were not made. No this is not conspiracy theory, this is how corruption thrives in India.
Distributor 4 - Consumer 0
Where is my redress mechanism in this flaw ridden process? In an online system maybe they could make the end consumer a participant in the supply chain process but most of India is not yet computer literate or has online access.
Ending on the note that I started out on this post, it is sad to see that to justify the triumph of the "free" market ![Uncontrollable Laughter](https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/images/smilies/uncontrollable laughter.png) we are absolutely fine about letting corruption break the backs of the poor and the underprivileged.
Last edited by samarjitdhar : 13th September 2012 at 23:33.
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