Gaslight Your Customer and FOMO!

A 20 something girl turns towards a long que of 200 people and asks, "Which KYC que is this?", meaning which governing system now needs to know you more intimately better known as KYC or Know Your Customer in India. She wonders, has she missed something she needs to do for accessing basic rights in the country? Her anxiety is palpable, which is now normal for every Indian. 

This is the ultimate Indian FOMO or the Fear of Missing Out every Indian can relate to today. Apparently the more smart we are becoming as cities more our systems are becoming analogue and it's relentless, it just doesn't stop. 

Since last September this is the 5th or 6th time I'm in a que chasing my validity as either a bonafide  voter, a customer or a mere household number. Severe anxiety and fatigue has set in now amongst us the common men and women but still we're queing up because our lot must have faith in a system or else the largest democracy of the world has little else to offer to her citizens.

I'm talking about rest of India who do not live in the National Capital Region. I guess we know they too are a large vote banks as we have just witnessed recently in Assam, Bihar, Odisha, West Bengal assembly elections and they count too. 

Civic amenities for them is also government's responsibility as much as the people in the capital region but sadly we are treated as second class citizens in our own country. The so called app that the Liquid Petroleum Gas companies have don't work, which are public sector companies and serve the customers through a distribution franchisees across the country and do have hi speed internet gateways but would like you to believe their servers are down! We are as a nation still largely cylinder dependent households and businesses because we do not have good relations with neighbouring natural gas rich countries and we produce pittance to our demand. 

The shooting gas prices, unavailability and delayed service now the agencies can squarely blame on US- Iran war but harassing their own customers for reason of pushing products just gets on your nerves. More so when the sole purpose of this is to fill their coffers with products. The approval of your KYC is linked with the purchase of your products otherwise it won't be approved. This nullifies the Indian Unique card validity too as validation is directly linked to your purchase. The better dressed you are the more products you have to purchase and a person with smaller means will have to pay a minimum of Rs. 250. 

As if this wasn't enough gaslighting they have made it mandatory for only the original customer who can now be well into their 90's have to visit in person to verify. The inhuman greed and insensitive attitude of businesses to order people to come on stretchers, ambulances or wheelchairs is both insensitive and inhuman and completely unacceptable.      

If a 20 something can be terrorised like this by the system holding her ransom, just imagine what's the situation of the billions of us who live in this country trying to understand why the so called products can't be bundled along with your cylinder delivery system and can be easily facilitate this process without losing critical man hours and productivity. Well, then when were we really thinking about productivity, all the system wants is control over every choice you make in living and ordinary life. So after spending 5 hours in que and losing 500 calories I am not only a validated customer but also a proud owner of a gas valve and gas pipe to save myself. 

Gaslighting so be it!