Unhealthy country

I have been binge watching the second season of 'Laakhon mein Ek' on Prime over the long weekend. Never knew about it. Don't care about the first season. Its one of those new millenial online docu-drama series. This one places a young, extremely positive, and a little out-of-touch young student of medicine in the middle of a political imbroglio. I was hoping for a happy ending. Alas, like anything else Indian , this one too does not have any.

The sad reality is that the story in this series can never be tagged historic. It will be contemporary , even about 50 years from now. By the way things are going, hardly anything is going to improve. Therefore one can't say that the timing of such a story is relevant. Any Indian will be able to relate to this story, anytime.

Students of medicine in India have to undergo what is called 'rural service'. After 5 years of theory, and 1 year of internship, they have to serve 1 or 2 years working at remote hospitals or health centres deep inside Indian villages. Sometimes these places are in or near reserved forests, or up in the hilss, with no easy access or communication with the outside world. It is the exact opposite of a plush seat job, in an air conditioned clinic. The education is considered complete only after completion of this service, and is required to secure the degree. And this way, the system ensures that there is always a steady stream of young healthy energetic young doctors standing by to serve the section of population who are in most need of dependable health care.

The students hate it. The administration struggles with it. But milllions depend on it.

I have met my share of shady quacks and doctors deep in Indian villages. Have been very fortunate to escape the system. With the government providing the medicine, and them providing the hospitals and doctors, one would think it would all go along swimmingly. One could not be more wrong. The system corrupts everyone involved. And the patients are most affected.

Its pathetic. And there are thousands of stories of people trying to fight the system. Legally and otherwise.

And this is one of those attempts.

Happy Vishu. Happy Easter. And remember the fallen.

Happy Vishu. Happy Easter.

Its always fascinating when these two days coincide, celebrating different events from different communities. Theres more than one reason to rejoice.

This year, we will also take time to remember those soldiers who died protecting the good in this world. So that we could enjoy it.

These are good days.

Violent Times

We live in strange, violent times. And nowhere is this more evident than on current news. This has lately caused me to intentionlally lose track of news from India. I wonder if India has always been like this, or is it because nowadays these kind of news gets reported more often ?

The number of domestic violences reported has spiked. From incidents of stalking, to confirmed cases of assault, leading to murder. Dissed lovers used to splash acid as revenge,  now they set their ex-partners on fire. Out in the daylight. Rising counts of sexual violence against minors. More rapes and murders being reported, specially from inner villages. Crime is rising, and democracy is decaying.

What is leading to these spikes in pre-meditated crimes ? Apart from a false sense of superioty by the preprator, it is lack of crime control. Lack of an efficient justice system. And lack of fear. The law in the country is so slow and backward, it takes decades for a court case to come ot conclusion. And the increasing bribery in the government does not help either.

One can only hope, foolishly, that humanity will come to its senses sooner, than later.

India in 2019, summarized

Over the years, I have seen all kinds of experts trying to summarize the political situation in India into a few minutes. And failed. This is a big year for India. And trying to explain it to an outsider is a futile attempt. Until I saw this.

More stories from WWI

 

The pas few days have been days of revelation for me. Although I hated history during my school days, I now (surprisingly) enjoy reading about little stories from history. Like India’s contribution during the two World wars, specially the first one.

Like this site, where they have attempted to document all the Sikh soldiers who died fighting in various World War I battles. Each icon depicts a death, and is placed at the martyr’s place of birth. Over one million Indian troops served overseas, of whom 62,000 died and another 67,000 were wounded. In total at least 74,187 Indian soldiers died during the war. In World War I the Indian Army fought against the German Empire in German East Africa and on the Western Front.

 

Elsewhere, I also came across this fantastice new movie aclled ‘They Shall Not Grow Old’. Directed by Peter Jackson (of LOTR fame), the footage is heavily reconstructed footage from WWI, colored my modern software, allowing us to see what life was like during those horrible years.  These audio interviews were conducted by the BBC in the 60s and 70s. The images are from the Imperial War Museum film archive. Although they only used a small part of it, Jackson's crew visually restored all 100 hours of footage the Imperial War Museums sent them for free

And worth adding, some of the footage in this doc was created in 1914-18 as propaganda. So, not all of it is authentic combat stuff; and some was designed to boost morale back home. That moment when the colour kicks in is jaw dropping. Audio dubbing is done with modern actors and shell sounds, so if you see a WW1 soldier speaking that is an actor overdubbing. Lip-readers were used to ensure dialogue accuracy. This film has covered the 4 years of the war in a single dramatic arc - obviously there were many terrible battles after The Somme. The Russians left the war in 1917 but in came America. This led to a huge German offensive which failed to stick.

Stats are hard, but estimates says 20 million people died in the First World War. It changed the world, empires fell, society changed; art, music, literature, poetry, film, gender roles. The Russians became communists. Middle East redrawn by Brits & French.

Smoke in the city

 

Wishing everyone in Delhi a smokey Diwali. 

 

Wonder what you are celebrating. Sadly, this disease is only spreading to other cities in India. Its every other city tomorrow.

 

 

 

Stat(u)e of the nation

 

As children, we used to play that game called statue. When the ‘IT’ yells ‘statue !’, everyone else had to hold their actions and not move a muscle. Blinking eyes was allowed, but nothing more. Who ever moved, was out.

I think this game is only played in India, and the country too loves statues. There are new coming every-year. Indian states find it easier to release funds to build huge stone and steel statues, than for actual governance and policy implementation. The other curious thing Indian politicians love to do is to rename things. Places, states, cities, towns, even roads and maybe even rivers.

 

Its pathetic. I think the reason is that people will die, but statues are going to stay.

The world’s fastest growing economy has the world’s most toxic air

 

Not surprised.

 

 

To wait, or not to wait

Actually, this is not such a difficult question. Those who can’t wait, should go ahead. And those who are willing to wait, well, can wait as long they want.

But should not convince others to do so.

What Young India wants: ‘Sarkari Naukri’

 

In one of the largest such exercises ever conducted in the world, millions of applicants are appearing this month for an online recruitment test conducted by the Indian Railways.

The Railways Recruitment Board (RRB) has received more than 24 million applications for roughly 120,000 vacancies in the organization. Most recruitment drives by government departments across the country generate similar enthusiasm among job seekers and it is quite common to find thousands of applicants, including PhDs and postgraduates, for low-end government job vacancies.

 

 

Data from the successive rounds of nationally representative youth surveys conducted by the Lokniti research programme at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) shows that the attraction of a sarkari naukri(government job) has not shown any signs of declining over the past decade. In fact, the share of youth who prefer a government job has grown slightly to 65% in 2016.

The share of youth who prefer a private job has nearly halved to 7% between the two rounds of the survey conducted in 2007 and 2016. The share of those wanting to start their own enterprises has risen marginally to 19% over the same period.

The 2007 and 2016 surveys covered 5,513 and 6,122 individuals, respectively. We compare the responses of individuals in the age group of 15-34 years.

Rural and urban youth hardly differ when it comes to job preferences. But the share of youth in big cities who prefer a government job shows a sharp increase between 2007 and 2016.

The rising preference for government jobs in big cities could be driven by a search for stability as well as the declining income differential between the private and public sector, especially in entry-level jobs.

Big cities here include the 10 most populous cities of India (Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Surat and Pune) spread across eight states and the most populous cities of 11 other states surveyed. Other cities have been classified as small cities in the analysis.

Among all groups, preference for government jobs is highest among the college-educated rural youth (82%). It is this segment that has also been at the forefront of recent agitations for extending reservation benefits to new groups. Urban youth who have studied beyond high school were relatively more likely to look beyond the public sector as compared with their rural counterparts.

Interestingly, there are no substantial differences in opinion based on economic class or social groups. For instance, 63% of respondents from poor households said they prefer government jobs while 65% from the upper middle class said so.

In the latest survey, respondents were also asked to choose between a permanent job with a relatively low salary, a job with like-minded co-workers, a well-earning job, or a job with high job satisfaction. A plurality of respondents (33%) chose job stability while high job satisfaction was the second most popular option. This explains why public sector employment remains so sought after among the youth. Almost half of the respondents who preferred governments also prioritized stability.

On the other hand, youngsters who preferred private sector jobs and self-employment mostly prioritized either job satisfaction or good income.

The sentiment on job creation has been the Achilles’ heel of the Narendra Modi government and it continues to remain tepid. In the successive rounds of the Mood of the Nation surveys conducted by Lokniti-CSDS over the past year, it has consistently emerged as one of the most important issues for the public.

Providing permanent government jobs is an even bigger challenge given that public employment has been shrinking in post-liberalization India.

The pre-liberalization wish of liberalization’s children will not be easy to fulfil.

 

India's health-cover problem

 

The Indian government has just launched its much anticipated heathcare scheme :Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY). Maybe they got the idea from the US, where the debate around a government funded/susbsidized public healthcare system has been going on for decades, leading up the current right-wing government cancelling the Affordable Care Act. One of the reasons why half of the US, thats the republicans, was against it was because there was no clear mention of how such a large program would be funded. They were clearly against the idea of funding the programme from taxes of the rich, inorder to pay for the health of the poor. The US remains the only OECD country which does not have universal healthcare, while even developing countries like Brazil, Mexico and Sri Lanka have UHC.

 

And so the idea of the world's largest democracy too achieving this goal of UHC is being beaten out of proportion. This is going to be the incumbent government's flagship contribution, if one slyly omits the demonitization fiasco. But the fact remains, not everyone is going to benefit from it. And no-one is questioning how such a programme will be funded.

The governmen says 50 crore individuals will benefit from it. Ok. As of now, the total population of India is 1,354,051,854. Thats 135 crore. 50 crore  of that rounds down to 37% of the population. Just about a third of the burgeoning population. And if one looks at the eligibility criteria, that is only the poorest of the poor of the society stands to be eligible. For the urban areas, they actually mention eligible occupations as rag pickers and beggars among others ! So clearyly, this is not a 'universal' program, and instead aims to provide a minimum for the section of the society that needs healthcare the most.

But the even more murky area is regarding how they plan to fund this. Healthcare in India is not cheap. Even with all the copy-cat medications and unlicensed drugs and doctors, quality healthcare still works out to be expensive. Combined with malnutrition, India is facing direct threats on two fronts – infectious diseases like tuberculosis, malaria, H1N1 and drug-resistant TB and the emergence of non-communicable ‘lifestyle’ diseases like heart ailments, diabetes and cancer.This has put the country’s arbitrarily distributed healthcare sector under pressure. It’s exacerbated by the fact that out-of-pocket expenditure on healthcare drove 55 million people in poverty in 2017. 

It may be recalled that PMJAY is one of the two components of Ayushman Bharat, the Modi government’s flagship health initiative. The other component is the creation of 1,50,000 “health and wellness centres”. The finance minister allocated Rs 1,200 crore for these centres in 2018-19. That comes to Rs 80,000 per centre. Essentially, it is just a new coat of paint for the old primary health centres, which are being renamed for the occasion.

At the moment, the fund allocated is 2000 crore, to cover 50 crore Indians. That works down to 40 rupees per  person for the whole year. According to recent media reports, NITI Aayog experts anticipate the annual PMJAY budget to rise to Rs 10,000 crore or so in the next few years, or something in that range. But Rs 10,000 crore (more than five times the current PMJAY budget) is still chickenfeed for the purpose of providing health insurance to 10 crore families. It comes to Rs 1,000 per family, or Rs 200 per person. For the whole year.

How would you feel if you were told you that your budget for health care this year is Rs 200? An illusion has been created that putting this money in an insurance premium has some sort of multiplier effect. This is not the case at all. Insurance can help to redistribute health expenditure towards those who need it most, but it cannot turn Rs 200 into more. If the government spends only Rs 200 per person on health insurance, that’s the amount of health care an average person gets.

True Universal Healthcare in India is still a long time away. Maybe this election gimmick is one step in that long-term direction.

Time to De-Link

 

The Supreme court of India yesterday ruled…well…50-50, on the validityvalidity of the Aadhaar act. Politicians are busy still discussing which side won, but one thing is clear: Private entities can no longer ask for Aadhaar related data of Indians. Aadhaar is now meant to be used for government benefits. So basically Aadhaar has now become one of the fifteen thousand other documents in India that are compulsorily optional.

 

 

So no need to provide aadhaar number for services like mobile phone connections, bank accounts and school admissions. All those private players who depended on the system for easy-KYC have been left in the open now. They will have to find a backup plan or go back to old school KYC. I am specially chuckling at how SBI mandated that a person can have only a single account via Aadhaar linking.

So now, its time to de-link. Coming to think of it, I have provided my own aadhaar number to about a dozen private companies for services. Time to follow up and get them all un-linked..

..if that is even possible now.

Sour apples

 

 

Its that time of the year again. Happens every time. Luxury electronic brand Apple announces their next series of overpriced, mostly re-used technology. And the world reacts in surprise to the new price. But not before they drool over the new design features. And sometime after that, the general public split into two. The fanboys and those who cannot afford to be fanboys.

Every year, there come articles where in 'experts' sit and debate as to why the new prices are exaggerated. Thats its not worth it. And how it is the best time to buy the previous version of Apple devices, which have just become a tad more affordable. Indian media is full of such articles. Its pathetic, how the media publish articles which they know people will search for. With the ever-falling Indian rupee, and heavy taxes from the government, the devices are now are as expensive as what was once the price of the cheapest car in the world.

Indians on twitter and facebook continue to rant the overpriced devices, creating new memes and trolls going into overtime.

I hate this, mainly becauses it messes up my news feed this time of the year. For some reason, google thinks I would be interested in these kind of news articles. I am not.

Grow up, Indian media. With only a 2% market for Apple products, that is a minority to cater to. India will always be the prime market for cheap Chinese products.

So what else can you get for over a thousand US dollars ? You could get a short term work visa to Australia for less than 500 USD !

Now ain't that something worth investing in ?

Vajpayee

 

A B Vajpayee was one of the most significant figures of post 1947 India. The media is paying tributes to what a great leader he was, and rightly so. But I will remember him for the Kargil war. It was a master-stroke which achieved dual targets. He was able to win India, and the world. In order to understand what happened, one only need to revisit the events during May 1999 on Wikipedia.

In May 1999, the Vajpayee led coalition government lost the support of AIADMK, and the central government lost majoriy, reducing to a caretaker status till the October 1999 elections.

So the government turned around and launched the Kargil counter-attack. All this time, there were insurgents entering the Indian side of LOC with Pakistan provided weaponary. The Indian army launched Vijay, to capture these insurgents. The war went on for two months, and India was successful in capturing back her LOC.

In October 1999, the BJP led NDA won a comfortable margin of 303 seats, which was a stable majority. That government lasted 5 years.

Till this point in history, Vajpayee was playing it soft with our immediate neighbours. Everyone remembers the bus trip to Lahore, and the Agra summit. So it rightly came as a surprise when he declared full on war with thy neighbour. In doing so, the projected the image of a newly strengthened nation of India to the world. And in the process, he won his country too.

I can never imaging anyone from Congress going that far.

Is India growing ?

India’s education mess

Today I saw a full two page ad in the national newspaper from Byju, the online student’s coaching startup. A full two pages about their free conselling session at home. This is despite the fact that their ads were recently blocked by ASCI in January this year for un-substantiated claims.

The Indian education system is a collage of contradictions. Its surprising that the world's largest democracy does not have a stable, self-sustaining system of eduction which can cater to the needs of millions of youngsters seeking education in the country. Successive governments have tried to 'reform' the education scene, whatever that means, but every time they have attempted so, something else has been broken. I  have been reading all kinds of news relating to India's education these past months, and they remind me of the hurdle I myself had to go through to reach where I am today.

These are the weeks of student winners, it is the time when various education institutions in the country announce the results of the 'toppers' in their examinations. It starts with the central government's CBSE announcing the names of students who scored highest in each of India's 29 states. There are two sets of exams, for 10th and 12th grades. I never understood why the 10th grades are so important, seeing that it is the 12 th grade marks which act as the qualifier for college admissions.

But wait, these are just central board. Every state has their own 'board' of education, and have students enrolled for 10th and 12th grade exams. And with 29 states, that is a lot of student toppers ! And then there is one more private, central school education board called ICSE, but no one seems to care about them.

Admissions to India's public colleges are based on the marks students score in these 'board exams'. Arts, science and language colleges setup a cut-off mark as the minimum marks required to gain admissions to their subsidized education courses. But simply scoring these minimum marks does not automatically guarantee admission, frequently parents arrange 'recommendation letters' from ministers and high profile officers and even religious heads as additional assurance. colleges also arrange for their own admission tests inorder to screen candidates. And some of those screening test are the toughest to crack in this country. 

The two streams of education most sought after after 12th grade education are Engineering and Medical courses. Students who pass out of these courses are trained engineers and doctors. And because of the demand and the overwhelming population of students applying,  the central and state governments have been organizing these 'entrance tests' at central and state level. Objective style reasoning tests with negative marks help screen the best of the best of millions of science graduates attempting to gain entrance to subsidized education. And there are so few seats up for grabs that there is immense competition.  For instance, only 4 of the 100 candidates attempting The National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) for medicine will win a seat. It is a little better for engineering seats, but that is only because there are more seats available.

And so, when the results of these entrance exams are announced, the toppers are again celebrated in the media. There are long interviews of the students, with their families and teachers, to understand how they cracked the system. And what are their tips and tricks to similar students who are attempting these tests in the future. Hell, some even appear on national TV, speaking about their experiences and giving out advise. Probably no other country parade their top scorers in TV like India does. In India, toppers are celebrities !

But again, these are the subsidized education seats we are talking about. The mafia in the private colleges are at an entirely different level. Education has turned to business in India, and if you don't have the wits to get a seat, you can definitely buy one. This is where the picture starts to turn bleak. Anticipating huge number of students who will not be able to clear the national tests, private colleges have mushroomed across the country, offering the same courses for a much higher price. In a way, private education is for the rich, but not academically gifted. The fees being charged at some of these institutes is so high that in recent years, majority of the seats remain unfilled.
Recently there was a directive to shut down as many as 150 colleges across India how had less than 50% of their seats filled. Just let that sink in.

Instead of trying and subsidising these additional seats in some way for the poorer students, the government simply wants to shut them down. Amazing governance.

But no test, repeat, no other is as tough and prestigious to crack as the Indian Civil Service exams. IAS exams. These are not education courses, but actual jobs people are applying for. Candidates need to have college degrees, and have to study additional subjects which are not covered by their college education. The civil services exam has among the lowest success rates among competitive examinations in the world, with a success percentage of less than .1 percent. Less than .1 percent of the applicants will land a job. Only one in every 10 candidate succeeds in the first attempt. There are people attempting upto 6 times, and some candidates can keep on trying until age 37 ! 

And as always, the IAS toppers are the media's favourites. The sheer prestige and security of the jobs means that anybody IAS topper is seen as the hardest, most hard-working and able minded of students. I think the assumption is that they will never have to face any problem in their life from that point onwards. They have cracked the system. Now they can sit back and reap the benefits, while the rest of us fight it out among ourselves.

The tale of getting into the civil services is one of hard work and dogged perseverance. That’s why it is all the more baffling how the Indian bureaucracy, which comprises such hard-working and committed people, earned the disrepute of running what is considered an inefficient government machinery.

They say history is written only by the winners. And this is in fact , true. Nobody talks about the trials and tribualations of the losers. Those who put in whatever they could, but failed to clear the system. Despite all these ‘free seats’ or subsidized seats, millions of students fail to get a chance to pursue their choice of education in this country. India also has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, one student kills self about every hour in the country. 

Yet, no one talks about them. They are just the collateral of having a skewed public education system, one which relies on intense competition. It is a broken system, and somehow the authorities have managed to make it even worse everytime they try to change something. I had it much better and easier 15 years ago. The future generations are going to have to struggle very hard to just maintain the pace.

It is case of textbook Darwinism: survival of the super-ultra-mega smartest.

India’s middle class has no spare money to spend

I love reading the economist, when I get the time, that is. Too bad they don’t cover India very often. But when they do publish something, they offer a new perspective to look at things. An outsider’s prespective. So I was a little surprised when they published not one, but two different articles about the Indian economy in January this year. Revealing and thought provoking, the articles where like migthy sucker punches. What was even more hilarious was the war-of-dumb-words going on in the comments section of both those articles. Patriotic Indians debating both sides by offering proof citing other media articles. I resisted the temptation to join the cockfight. Pretty hard to do when the articles were spot on.Before we proceed, please read these articles on how the magazine works internationally, and why their writers are anonymous.The two new articles about India basically say that the Indian middle class has no spare money to spend on world-class luxuries, as they are getting poorer and poorer. And the whole idea that India is the fastest growing economy and the next place for international brands to set shop is a sham. Something I had long suspected. Most international brands like Apple , Amazon and Google have already learnt this truth, and others are catching on. The articles then go to explain as to how this happened and why the trend still continues.
Why is the middle class of the economy important ? These would be the people whose income is increasing and are more likely to purchase more products and services, specially from new gen companies , probably international markets. The upper class can be considered saturated, they might have already purchased luxuries. And the lower class, well, they can’t be sold.Go over to wikipedia’s article and sort the list of countries according to income classes. India has the lowest percentage of middle and upper class.Other points which stood out.
Ouch !The truth can be distilled out easily, even after becoming the world’s fastest growing economy, Indians do not have the purchasing power that their counterparts in other developing or developed countries have. Indians are spending, but they only buy the cheapest options in every category. Not because they are saving the rest, but because that is all that they can afford. Indian customers buy the cheapest chines manufactured phones and tvs, instead of those fancy western brands. They buy made in India apparel and eat at low cost restuarants, instead of shopping from international brands and eating at international fast food chains. If a middle class family’s bread earner gets a promotion or comes to any extra wealth, they would rather invest that money in better healthcare or save it in a long term account , instead of purchasing non-essentials for the family. They see every expenditure as a liability, and every opportunity to save as a chance to grow. This is not the kind of market which would upgrade their smartphones every few months, or would eat at a five star restuarant to celebrate occasions.But we have known this for years. This is the very defnition of the Indian middle class. Spend only on needs, not on greeds.Some other eye openers: Apple made 0.7% of its global revenues in India in the year to March 2017.Facebook, though it has 241m users in India, probably the most in the world in one country, registered revenues of just $51m in the same period.Google is growing more slowly in India than in the rest of the world.Despite two decades of investment McDonald’s has hardly any more joints in India than in Poland or Taiwan.Starbucks says it has big plans for India but has opened about one new coffee shop a month over the past two years, bringing its total to around 100—on a par with Utah or the United Arab Emirates. A new Starbucks opens in China every 15 hours, adding to 3,000 already operating.Inditex, Zara’s parent firm, has 46 clothes shops in India, fewer than in Ireland, Lithuania or Kazakhstan.Hindustan Unilever, which purveys sachets of shampoo for just a few rupees, has seen virtually no sales growth in dollar terms since 2012.Even after years of enticing customers with heavily discounted wares, perhaps 50m online shoppers are active in India—roughly, the richest 5-10% of the population.India is now the fourth largest auto market, having overtaken Germany, but 80% of those sales was to Indian company Maruthi, which makes the cheapest, or most affordable vehicles in the country. So in terms of money, this is still among the cheapest markets.  International brands have not succeeded in India.Even for someone in the top 10% of Indian earners, an annual Netflix subscription can cost over a week’s income.Apple ads may plaster Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, but for only one in ten Indians would the latest iPhone represent less than half a year’s salary.On and on..The reason for this downward spiral are many. First is the bureacracy. Or should I say bureacrazy.Another is the informal industry. 93% of Indians work in the informal sector, earning less than 10 dollars a day.Then there is the education, or lack of.
So, whats the takeaway. The illusion is wearing off. Soon international brands will realize that the only way they can cater to this dissiappearing market is to offer localized, cheaper and affordable options. They may get the market in term of units sold.But not for value earned.x
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Nature’s fury continues

 

 

 

 

 

Whats outrageous is that idiots at the MET department still insist on calling these ‘pre-monsoon’ showers !

Dust Storms now

 

For anyone still looking for proof of climate change : Today a freak dust storm killed more than 100 people in India.

 

Poor Chidu’s airport coffee

 

Woke up to this absurd trending news on Indian media. This is what happened.

 

It seems former finance minister P Chidambaram was ‘horrified’ when asked to pay 135 rs for a cup of tea-bag tea. The irony here is the fact that this guy was finance minister for more than 10 years, and he never once questioned or was aware of the over-inflation at Indian airports. Clearly, he has never paid for something like this from his own pocket the entire time he was in government.

This begs the question, if the finance minister was not aware of this, what else was the government sleeping on ? Everything is expensive on the air side of Indian airports. I have seen even foreigners refusing to pay the exhorbitant price and walking away. I have also seen business travellers asking for a receipt for the meal, obvioulsy to claim it back from their employers.

Its a different story outside India. Here in Australia, there is a range of restuarants and snack counters on the airside of the airport, and nothing is priced more than what they charge on the streets. It is simply cheaper to eat at the airport, than to buy food on the plane.

Anyway, he asked for twitter’s response. He got more than he asked for.