Gara Bara is the fine art of price negotiation here (it literally means 11,12….not sure how that morphed into “price negotiation.”) Amnon is a natural at this, as described in an earlier post. Jordan, Jesse, and Adam are also becoming expert. I, on the other hand, never negotiate down anything. With a few key exceptions - - Once I was approached by a street side shoeshiner, who wanted to polish my shoes. OK. I didn’t negotiate a price up front, thinking how much could he possibly charge. He asked for 300 rupees, the equivalent of $6. I KNEW that was scamming, though I didn’t know the real price. I told him I would give him no more than 200 rupees. He said he had used extra special polish. I then asked a nearby taxi driver what the fair price was. He said 30 rupees (75 cents). That incensed me. The taxi driver came back with me to the shoe shiner, and began arguing in Hindi. I ultimately got back another 100 rupees. So the scamming shoe shiner got an ill-deserved 200% tip. But he did use extra special polish, after all. My colleague at work said I could get a brand new pair of shiny shoes for the 300 rupees originally requested.
In general, it is hard for me to get too exercised about prices here, even when I am being targeted, marked, and clearly scammed. I continue to convert prices in my head to dollars, and the extra scam factor is too trivial (financially) to fuss over. Jordan, Jesse, and Adam, however, have turned this into an honor match, and refuse to be taken advantage of. If they know a particular rickshaw route should be 50 rupees, they are peeved to be charged 80 and will refuse to pay it. If the rickshaw driver refuses to turn on his meter, they threaten to contact authorities. They feel strongly that it is a bad precedent to enable the drivers or merchants to take advantage of foreigners and get away with it. And they see themselves as no longer fleeting tourists; so they are setting the precedent for other foreigners that are more naïve about the system here.
Clearly I am not as principled as the men in my life…
I point out that they are getting exercised over 35 cents or so. And I feel that everyone in the less-than-middle-class status (the overwhelming majority here) needs that money more than we do, so I see it as a charitable contribution that is being taken from us (albeit not so nicely) from someone that needs it. But scamming protects THEIR pride, as opposed to putting out their hand and begging for cash. So someone’s pride has to “give” here…
Then, there is the rule of unintended consequences. I think I am doing a good thing for the individuals, but I am perhaps, overall, doing a bad thing, by inflating price expectations for others, such as the local Indian population. A colleague pointed out that the number of foreign tourists in Goa has changed the equation for the Indian population, since the working community there would rather service the over-generous foreign community, than the locals. And prices start to rise to meet what the foreign communities are willing to pay; why leave all the money on the table when the foreigners don’t seem to even notice the difference between 100 rupees and 1000? This has been formalized at some tourist sites - - the entry fee at the Taj Mahal for Indians is 20 rupees (<50 cents) for foreigners it is 750 rupees (>$16)
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