The onus is on consumers to stand up for their rights
By Ramanujam Sridhar
CHENNAI, Tamil Nadu (The Hindu Business Line), March 20, 2008:
Gandhiji’s words on the importance of customers to a business are well worth remembering. Lagey raho customer bhai! was one of the few Hindi films I liked. Now that sounds quite dramatic and profound, but I do know that I am not alone in admiring that film, even allowing for the fact that I spent the early part of my life in Tamil Nadu which was chanting evocative and powerful slogans like “Hindi Down Down!” during those formative and impressionable years. But less of my childhood and more of the movie and what we can learn from it.
There is one particular scene in the movie where the protagonist enlists the help of Bapu to answer queries by senior citizens on the Mahatma and his life to impress and get closer to the girl he loves, who takes care of these senior citizens.
One of the senior citizens is anguished that a little boy has thrown a stone at the statue of the Mahatma and damaged it and wants to know what should be done about it to which the Mahatma gives a strange answer which the confused hero repeats.
He says: “Remove my statues from everywhere, remove my pictures from everywhere, remove my picture from currency notes”, and when there is shocked silence he says, “but just keep me in your hearts” and the audience and the senior citizens are delighted.
If only we kept the right things in our hearts and homes! Back to my childhood and the Mahatma whose picture I used to see in the Khadi Bhandar where we used to buy stuff and where one got to see this inspiring philosophy
“A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work - he is the purpose of it. We are not doing him a favour by serving him. He is doing us a favour by giving us an opportunity to serve him.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi.
I am not sure if anyone in those premises ever read that inspiring slogan or even remotely considers following it. Indifference to the consumer is also true of modern, successful and otherwise professional organisations.....
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We need to tell the world about our difficulties as consumers through mails, blogs, messages, columns, speeches … whatever means of communication work for us and the recipient. I am sure the Mahatma who told us to show the other cheek would realise that today’s world needs the consumer to be more than aware. Caveat Emptor has to be refined for today. Today she needs to create awareness about things that are not working and that are affecting our lives.
Today’s customer has to be more active, even an activist for the collective rights of society and the guiding slogan might well be Lagey raho customer bhai.Ramanujam Sridhar is CEO, brand-comm,
and the author of
One Land, One Billion Minds.
Copyright © 2008, The Hindu Business Line.
