What do we pay for?

December 19, 2011 in Behavior, Life, Misc, Random

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The blog has been relatively dormant of late and the milestone of 400000 hits has gone past unnoticed. I have tried writing several posts, one of them a poem, like the ones I used to write in the good old days. But none of them reached a conclusion. It seems this is a phase in my life when I am so interested in everything around that I get into everything without appropriate planning and none of this gets to a conclusion.

However, I had an interesting observation today. I ate lunch with tasty chhole poori and a sweet dish in a sum of twenty rupees. The place was hygienic and the food was tasty. I was left wondering how can such a steep variation in prices of the same food exist. While the IIT Delhi staff canteen (the place where I ate today) serves this stuff for twenty bucks, the Sip N Byte just above it serves the same food for around sixty rupees. The IRCTC cafe FX would serve it for similar amount and the hotel where we stayed for the Indo-German Winter Academy(don’t worry if you don’t get it) would have served it for Rs 400-500. Although the food served for 400-500 would be marginally better in quality and lot better in terms of service provided, but there was nothing so phenomenal to describe the difference.

Does the price then depend on who eats where? The staff canteen where the lower grade employees would eat serves it cheaper than the Sip N Byte where the students go (they have larger sum to spend) and the five starts would sell it higher because the people who eat there have hefty amounts in their pocket or their expenses have been paid for by someone with hefty amounts in their pockets.It appears that brand is the only thing that matters. I wouldn’t want to be seen at the cheapo staff canteen, so I don’t go to it and a celeb wouldn’t want to be seen at a cheapo Sip n byte and so he goes to a five star.

I could have gone the cliched way by saying that if the 5% of Indians who eat at five stars ate at the staff canteen, every Indian could have eaten at the staff canteen. But that has been said time and again by lots of people and there would be no use restating it. Besides, no one at the five stars ever reads my blog, so what effect would that have.

And it  is not only the food. There are lots of other places where such differences come in. I have seen people come out of a movie theatre or a PVR and then fight with the Rickshaw wala for five rupees. Did they ever bargain the price of the movie ticket?

Please note I am not complaining. These are questions which come up in everyone’s minds, but the answers are beyond my comprehension. Maybe I need to study more of sociology or economics, but I am too busy with my engineering at IIT Delhi. This post might not be a good post, but I just felt I had to start by writing something so that I can be myself again.

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