Tag: free food

The Problem with Unbundled Air Fares

Normally I would welcome a move like the recent one by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) that allows airlines to decrease baggage limit and allows them to charge for seat allocation. While I’m a fan of checking in early and getting in a seat towards the front of the flight (I usually don’t carry much luggage on my business trips), under normal circumstances I wouldn’t mind the extra charge as I would believe it would be offset by a corresponding decrease in the base fare.

However, I have a problem. I don’t pay for most of my flights – I charge them to my client. And this is true of all business travelers – who charge it to either their own or to some other company. And when you want to charge your air fare to someone else, one nice bundled fare makes sense. For example (especially since I charge my flights to my client) I would be embarrassed to add line items in my invoice to ask for reimbursements of the Rs. 200 I paid for an aisle seat, or the Rs. 160 I paid for the sandwich. A nice bundled fare would spare me of all such embarrassment.

Which probably explains why most airlines that primarily depend on business travelers for their business don’t unbundle their fares – that their baggage allocations remain high, that they give free food on board and they don’t charge you extra for lounge access (instead using your loyalty tier to give that to you). Business travelers, as I explained above, don’t like unbundled fares.

Which makes it intriguing that Jet Airways, which prides itself as being a “full service carrier” has decided to cut baggage limits and charge for seat allocation (they continue to not charge for food, though). Perhaps they have recognized that a large number of business travelers have already migrated to the so-called low-cost Indigo (it’s impossible for Indigo to have a 30% market share if they don’t get any business travelers at all), because of which Indian business travelers may not actually mind the unbundling.

Currently, Indigo flights have a “corporate program”, where the price of your sandwich and drink is bundled into the price of the ticket. I normally book my tickets on Cleartrip, so have never been eligible for this, but I can see why this program is popular – it prevents corporates from adding petty line items such as sandwiches to their invoices. On a similar note, I predict that soon all airlines will have a “corporate program” where the price of the allocated seat and a certain amount of baggage (over and above the standard 15kg) will be  bundled into the base price of the ticket. Now that I charge my flights to a client, I hope this happens soon.

Idealism

So on Sunday we went to this temple on the outskirts of Bangalore where the in-laws performed Satyanarayana Pooja. There was a small number relatives there, and a large gang on unknown people (it was essentially a public function). It’s a nice temple, dedicated to Shiva, and built in the Kerala style. I think it’s still work-in-progress, and there’s stuff to be done in terms of carvings and stuff. And it’s in a nice secluded spot which adds to the peace of the place.

So the temple has this policy of “annadaana” (rice donation), where they serve lunch to everyone who visits them around lunch time. I’ve written about temple meals before, and you know I’m not a big fan of them. That aside, there was this little act of forced idealism in this temple around meal time, which I wasn’t too happy about.

So the temple doesn’t invest in professional cleaners to clean the plates (I don’t understand why temples insist on serving meals in steel plates – the same is the case in Sringeri and Horanadu also). Instead, you are supposed to wash your plate and tumbler after you’re done eating. In theory this is a fine idea – if we are giving you free food, you might as well do this small help in terms of cleaning up after you. But the problem is this creates huge incentive problems.

There is a reason that public loos are seldom clean – there is no incentive for a user to keep the loo clean for the person who uses it after them. The only way a public loo can be kept clean is by employing paid labour to clean it, where it isn’t hard to align incentives of the cleaners with cleanliness of the loo. Similarly, why would you want to make a special effort into cleaning your plate when some unknown person who you’ll probably never meet in life is going to eat out of it next?

I appreciate the idealism  but the economics simply don’t work. To put it simply – cleaner plates implies greater satisfaction among people who are there at the temple to eat, which encourages repeated visits, which results in greater donations. I’m sure the little investment in people to clean the plates can be recovered many times over in terms of increase in donation. Still, they insist on imposing ideals on people..

I’m not really going to talk about the food. However, I want to briefly mention about the pooja itself, which went on for about double the time as a normal Satyanarayana Pooja (my wife and I performed one such the day after our wedding, so I know the “standard”). The pujari (who is responsible for building the temple) put in a lot of extra fittings, and a lot of the crowd (mostly people unknown to me – it was a public event) seemed to rather enjoy it. I think there is this misplaced notion somewhere that more rituals implies more good karma.

And on a related note, I fail to understand what people mean when they say “pooje is going on well” (I’ve heard this phrase too many times to not comment on it). Does it simply mean “there have been no disasters so far during the pooje” (I can’t think of any other meaning for it)?

Temples

I’ve never been the religious type. I seldom go to temples. I seldom go to temples in my own city. I do visit temples when I’m traveling, but that is more as a tourist attraction. I’ve been to Tirupati once (Boxing Day 1991) and to Mantralaya twice and am not keen to visit either place again. After my first visit there in 1990, I would consider the Annapurna temple  in Horanadu (near Chickmagalur) as my favourite temple. This was until a year ago when I visited it again and got pissed off by the crowds and formalities.

The amount I contribute to the Hundi in temples is also highly variable, and a direct function of how much I like the temple. I consider my contribution to the Hundi as my contribution for the upkeep and maintenance of the temple, and in support of the temple’s activities (for example, I tend to put in a higher amount in temples which serve free food). If I don’t like a temple, I just make a token contribution of Rs. 2 or Rs. 5 and flee. Also, I usually make my contributions to the Hundi, and not to the plate that comes along with the mangalaarathi. This is to ensure that the priest doesn’t kult my contribution.

Some temples do end up making me feel spiritual. It is hard to describe that feeling but let me tell you that it is the same that I felt when I smoked my first cigarette (and decided that smoking was too addictive to take up as a hobby and abandoned it). It is that feeling of inner calm. It is that feeling of being at complete peace with oneself. Sadly I haven’t felt that way at any temple since I started earning, else that temple might have been blessed with a fat contribution from my wallet.

I find the temples in North India too noisy. I remember literally running away from the ISKCON temple in Delhi six years ago because I thought it looked like a discotheque – loud devotional songs and people dancing. Today I went to a couple of temples near Connaught Place and it was similar – loud bhajans on one side, astrologers sitting all around the temple, and general disorder everywhere else. There was no way that temple could offer any peace or calm or any spiritual benefit. I fought with my mother when she insisted I should contribute at least Rs. 10 to the Hundi.

My contribution to temples is also an inverse function of its popularity – I usually contribute less at more popular temples because I can freeride on the rest of the visitors’ contribution. If it is a smaller temple and if i like it, I feel more responsible to contribute towards its upkeep.

And when I go to a temple, I always get archane done. That way, I definitely get some sugar candy!

And why do I not want to go back to Tirupati? Because I think it is too crowded to offer any kind of spiritual benefit. And Mantralaya? The last time I went there someone got a special pooja done in my name and as “prasad”, the swami there threw a towel on my back, and then threw an orange and asked me to catch it. I find that demeaning and don’t want to go back there again. Oh, and I wasn’t let in to the dining hall since I wasn’t wearing my sacred thread.