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Correspondent

23 August 2024 at 4:29:04 pm

Festive Surge

India’s bazaars have glittered this Diwali with the unmistakable glow of consumer confidence. The country’s festive sales crossed a staggering Rs. 6 lakh crore with goods alone accounting for Rs. 5.4 lakh crore and services contributing Rs. 65,000 crore. More remarkable still, the bulk of this spending flowed through India’s traditional markets rather than e-commerce platforms. After years of economic caution and digital dominance, Indians are once again shopping in person and buying local....

Festive Surge

India’s bazaars have glittered this Diwali with the unmistakable glow of consumer confidence. The country’s festive sales crossed a staggering Rs. 6 lakh crore with goods alone accounting for Rs. 5.4 lakh crore and services contributing Rs. 65,000 crore. More remarkable still, the bulk of this spending flowed through India’s traditional markets rather than e-commerce platforms. After years of economic caution and digital dominance, Indians are once again shopping in person and buying local. This reversal owes much to policy. The recent rationalisation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) which trimmed rates across categories from garments to home furnishings, has given consumption a timely push. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s September rate cuts, combined with income tax relief and easing interest rates, have strengthened household budgets just as inflation softened. The middle class, long squeezed between rising costs and stagnant wages, has found reason to spend again. Retailers report that shoppers filled their bags with everything from lab-grown diamonds and casual wear to consumer durables and décor, blurring the line between necessity and indulgence. The effect has been broad-based. According to Crisil Ratings, 40 organised apparel retailers, who together generate roughly a third of the sector’s revenue, could see growth of 13–14 percent this financial year, aided by a 200-basis-point bump from GST cuts alone. Small traders too have flourished. The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) estimates that 85 percent of total festive trade came from non-corporate and traditional markets, a robust comeback for brick-and-mortar retail that had been under siege from online rivals. This surge signals a subtle but significant cultural shift. The “Vocal for Local” and “Swadeshi Diwali” campaigns struck a patriotic chord, with consumers reportedly preferring Indian-made products to imported ones. Demand for Chinese goods fell sharply, while sales of Indian-manufactured products rose by a quarter over last year. For the first time in years, “buying Indian” has become both an act of economic participation and of national pride. The sectoral spread of this boom underlines its breadth. Groceries and fast-moving consumer goods accounted for 12 percent of the total, gold and jewellery 10 percent, and electronics 8 percent. Even traditionally modest categories like home furnishings, décor and confectionery recorded double-digit growth. In the smaller towns that anchor India’s consumption story, traders say stable prices and improved affordability kept registers ringing late into the festive weekend. Yet, much of this buoyancy rests on a fragile equilibrium. Inflation remains contained, and interest rates have been eased, but both could tighten again. Sustaining this spurt will require continued fiscal prudence and regulatory clarity, especially as digital commerce continues to expand its reach. Yet for now, the signs are auspicious. After years of subdued demand and inflationary unease, India’s shoppers appear to have rediscovered their appetite for consumption and their faith in domestic enterprise. The result is not only a record-breaking Diwali, but a reaffirmation of the local marketplace as the heartbeat of India’s economy.

IRCTC blew up Rs 2600-cr for website upkeep

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Mumbai: The Railway Ministry’s listed ‘Navratna’ company, Indian Railway Catering & Tourism Corporation Ltd. (IRCTC) has admitted under RTI that it spent a whopping Rs.2,619 crore for the maintenance and upkeep of its website, www.irctc.com.

 

The amount – data available for the past three years - is collected as the innocuous-sounding ‘Convenience Fees’ from crores of passengers annually booking online tickets on the IRCTC website.

 

The Convenience Fees (CF) collected were: Rs 802-crore (2022-2023), Rs 863-crore (2023-2024) and last year’s Rs. 954-crore (2024-2025) – totaling to a staggering Rs. 2,619 crore.

 

The IRCTC stated that it collects only CFs for online bookings of tickets and does not charge a separate Transaction Fee (TF) from the prospective travelers.

 

The revelation was made in response to a RTI query posed by Pune businessman Prafful Sarda, seeking details of the IRCTC’s CF revenues starting from 2004.

 

“However, it was declined on grounds that it was a huge data which was not readily available and doled out the hair-raising figures of the last 3 years. There are different categories of the CF charges, as per the RTI reply,” Sarda told ‘The Perfect Voice’.

 

The 27-year-old company said the CF collected for online bookings is ploughed back for “the upkeep, maintenance and running of the website”.

 

For booking through IRCTC Sleeper Class tickets, the CF is Rs. 15+GST and for all air-conditioned class bookings, the CF is Rs 30+GST.

 

However, for online ticket bookings through BHIM or any other UPI, the IRCTC levies Rs 10+GST for all non-AC tickets and Rs 20+GST for AC classes.

 

On an average, 12,38,000 tickets were booked daily (2023-2024), or more than 45-crore tickets annually from the IRCTC website, and the CF amounts are non-refundable.

 

“When a single government service portal collects such astronomical amounts from customers as CF, what about other similar public-private portals and their massive incomes by this route,” asked Sarda.

 

Criminal loot

Council for Protection of Rights President, Barrister Vinod Tiwari said this amounts to a ‘criminal loot’ which IRCTC is disguising as expense for maintenance of its website.

 

“This simply reeks of a scam. No website needs such an amount only for the upkeep-maintenance, as IRCTC claims. The CBI must probe this fraud and bring out the details before the public,” demanded Barr. Tiwari.

 

Terming it as ‘blatant fleecing’ of passengers, Mumbai stock market consultant Rajesh Shah said CF’s are levied by practically all service websites of banks, utilities and other providers, many take a percentage of the transaction amount, so the consumer is in the dark about what amount is actually deducted.

 

“The government should stop this, and must intervene to announce a flat CF of One Rupee for any online transaction/s, irrespective of the amount. Already extra charges are levied for a certain number of ATM withdrawals/transactions, besides the GST,” Shah told ‘The Perfect Voice’.

 

Though IRCTC said the option of booking tickets offline is also available, it controls a stupendous 83 per cent of the online ticketing on the Indian Railways (IR), and the remaining paltry 17 per cent is divided among multitudes of private players and tour operators.

 

A high-ranking IR source suspects something amiss as such a huge amount is not required to be diverted for merely upkeep and maintenance of a website.

 

IRCTC: Jewel in the railways’ crown

Set up in Sep. 1999, the New Delhi-based IRCTC is the professional hospitality and travel arm of IR for upgradation of catering services over IR and boost rail-bound domestic and in-bound tourism in the country.

 

It is intended to upgrade, professionalize and manage the catering and hospitality services at railway stations, on trains, etc, to promote domestic and international tourism through development of budget hotels, special tour packages, information, commercial publicity and global reservation systems.

 

IRCTC’s core activities are: Catering & Hospitality, Internet Ticketing, Travel & Tourism, Packaged Drinking Water (‘Rail Neer’) through 19 plants across India, and its operations are sprawled across 5 Zonal Offices, 10 Regional Offices, and one Internet Ticketing and Tourism Office each in New Delhi.

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