Thursday 11 July 2013

How to curb Coolie's Monopoly Power at Railway Stations?

We all travel in trains. If you have luggage you normally take the help of a Coolie, that is, the luggage pickers. And you know how do and how much they exploit passengers. The exploitation is more if you are alone and if you have couple of heavy-weighted luggage bags. You have no other way than to surrender yourself before them. They also know this. Like couple of dogs tugging at a bone, couple of coolies will surround you to pick up luggage form you. No doubt they are doing a great job. Imagine how you would handle so many luggages in big railway stations.  So, they have an upper-hand in bargaining. But unlike the dogs tugging at a bone (who fight each other for that piece of bone), here collies work like a sophisticated cartel; uniform price and better coordination among them. Just Like OPEC. For example, if you have two bags and you want to go platform no-4, coach no-3, and the distance from your platform to the place of bargaining is 1 K.M, then no matter how many coolies you ask, you would only hear one price.

So what determines price? How do they charge? In other words how do they fix that price, on what basis? I guess two factors play a major role. The number of bags (implicitly the weight) and the distance from your platform to the place of bargaining.

So to curb the monopoly power we can install weighing machines or a machine that tells you the distance to the coach position and weight of your luggage. Price will be fixed accordingly. Further, a rate will be fixed in night times and rain time. I think this would reduce the monopoly power. And it is good for both passengers and of course, for coolies. So we don’t feel cheated.

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