I am rich, bitch!

Made my first ATM withdrawal today; a pretty normal transaction except for that transaction receipt. Along with the usual information like amount withdrawn it also had my remaining balance, converted into Rupees. Damn! That's a lot of digits.

When I mentioned this to someone, I learned something else - there are no ATM fees in India. Bank of America will of course charge me an arm and a leg for using a non bank ATM, give me a poor exchange rate, and then add a finance charge for the currency exchange, but for transactions within India charging an ATM is illegal. The Supreme Court (of India) made this ruling to protect consumers.

Another thing that they did was made sure that Excise tax is paid on the actual price, not the sale price. This is how it was explained to me. With consumerism coming to India in a big way, there were a lot of "deals" to be found. Ads like "90% off", "Buy 1 get 5 Free" made it difficult for the consumer to figure out what was a good value from what was just a gimmick - the manufacturer just coming up with a phoney MSRP just so that they can give these amazing looking discounts. Often these "discounted" prices were higher than the normal price from another manufacturer. Stop this bullshit said the courts and stop confusing the consumer. You can offer the ridiculous deals if you want to, but you will pay a price for it; the excise tax paid by the manufacturer will be on your inflated MSRP.

Now I am pretty sure it was not the Court that came up with this mechanism of charging excise, for that is not the role of the judiciary. The might have just made a ruling on a case brought up by the Excise department, but the nonetheless it resulted in a win for the consumer. I am not even sure that any of it is even true. However, what I found fascinating the respect and reverence for the courts. It was an optimism about the "system", that was missing a decade ago. The story, even if it was made up, reflected a belief that things are getting better.