Have attitude, will vend

While we Indians (and actually, Asians in general) lament about our plight in this world, and how we just can't seem to "prosper", maybe someone should draw our attention to one of the primary tenets of capitalism - customer focus. India is probably one of the few "progressive" countries where a customer is turned away by a vendor for lack of loose change to pay for goods. I'm assuming that in a country of a half billion adults, each one of us encounters at least one such condition every month. That's six billion transactions denied every year - at an average rate of five rupees per transaction, that's about thirty billion rupees (three quarters of a billion dollars) worth of transactions lost every year. But that's not it. My transaction of this month (I'm encountering these at one a day nowadays) was today at Alankit - apparently a large financial house - whose Ashok Vihar branch I stopped by to pick up an application form (supposed to be free, but for which they charge five rupees). The genius at the cash counter (who, I wouldn't be surprised, is probably an MBA from some no-name school) could use a lesson in customer service - and how asking your customer to go get change because you can't break a tenner can cost your company four million rupees (about a hundred thousand dollars) in business. The fine people at Alankit, I'm afraid, will never find that out.