Corrupt practices and corruption are some thing everyone has been a victim of at some point of time. However, as human beings most of us are loath to admit existence of corruption when we happen to be its direct or indirect beneficiaries. What is even more strange society refuses to recognize many corrupt practices right under everyone’s nose and the gainer is some business house. As explained in Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, it could be due to indifference as each individual looses insignificant amounts or there could be a fear of the business tycoons who would
kill to protect their ill begotten wealth and its continued growth. In this series of articles the writer promises to present a few examples to alert and awaken readers and society.Students of Science and Mathematics know that most complex theorems usually have simplest of proofs. Similarly the complex hypothesis that collectively we are losing billions of dollars every month to make one or few business tycoons richer could be easily established by a few examples. Having covered the cases of simplest consumables your toothpaste and your mobile hand-set in first two parts, let us take up another consumable which most of us use, i.e. mosquito repellent.
Case of mosquito repellent manufacturers
Mosquito repellents that slowly generate mosquito repellent fumes using liquids that evaporate through complex heating contraptions hit the markets about three decades ago and have been in use ever since. You will even find them in your hotel room if it is located in an area which has mosquitoes.
Initially these contraptions came in the form of a miniature hotplate on which a small paper mat was kept. Repellent chemical in the mat was sufficient to keep mosquitoes away for 24 hours even though its efficacy was marginally lesser on the second night. Consumers became wiser after a while and discovered that the mat could be turned upside down on the second night to get good results even on the second night.
Enlightenment of consumers must have affected sales of mosquito repellents. For, the manufacturers soon came up with a different kind of contraptions in a bottle filled with liquid and a carbon rod inserted with tip of the rod
to be heated by another complex contraption. Initially, this carbon rod was fixed so as to be touching the bottom of the bottle ensuring that repellent was used up to its last drop. Later, the manufacturers became wiser and left a gap between the bottom of the bottle and end of the carbon rod ensuring that some liquid repellent residue remained in the bottle till the end forcing consumers to purchase a refill sooner.At the same time they introduced mats with a thin aluminum foil glued to one side. That did nothing to improve the efficacy of the mats but served only to ensure that mats could not be turned upside down on the second night for use. Aluminum foil ensured that when the mat was heated from the other side, repellent fumes did not escape to repel mosquitoes and the consumer had to use a fresh mat every night.
Where is corruption in that?
These practices force consumers spend money buying a refill without exploiting full potential of the earlier one, which is wasted due to malicious fault in its design created by the producer or manufacturer. Each consumer may only spend a few cents extra every month but considering that there are a billion existing and few billion potential consumers out there one can see the kind of additional sale and extra profits these manufacturers are making through these practices designed to harm consumers.
The problem is that no consumer applies his mind or talks about these things. That is how these kind of corrupt practices continue. Few of us may be aware of a legal process to curb this kind of corruption, while a vast majority considers itself doomed to suffer in silence. The corruption lies in forcing consumers to make purchases that could have been avoided by making alterations to the product reducing its life with no benefit to the consumer.
This is one more facet of corruption few of us would have ever thought about. Do something if you can but be careful, you would be hitting bottom-lines of many tycoons’ balance sheets.
If you liked this, you might want to also read:
1) http://expertscolumn.com/content/many-headed-monster-corruption-part-1
2) http://expertscolumn.com/content/many-headed-monster-corruption-part-2