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BLINKING IT COULD HURT YOUR POCKET!
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BLINKING IT COULD HURT YOUR POCKET!

Aug 15- Aug 21, 2026, Stray Thoughts August 14, 2026 , by

AND a few stray thoughts following the week for yet another Saturday. For a Saturday following the week when Blinkit and Instamart are actually looting marts. Particularly if you order small quantities outside of office hours. For a Saturday following the week when the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Healthcare is calling for regulation of the tariffs charged by private hospitals. For a Saturday following the week when the National Cockroach Party latest focussing on the state of our government schools particularly in rural areas. For a Saturday following the week when the protest in Assonora against the pollution of the Par river.

BLINKIT & INSTAMART
AND a few stray thoughts on Blinkit and Instamart which are coming across as more actually loot marts for the home delivery they do. Particularly as we discovered if we order one thing at a time or in small quantities outside of office hours. For example, on Tuesday night, August 11 late evening, I ordered a packet of Gemini rice bran oil which is used to light up diya at our home. The cost of the rice bran oil packet was Rs 171. I ended up paying Rs223 inclusive of delivery charges. A premium of Rs52. Earlier in the day, because there was no crunchy “farsan” which I normally have with my kichadi or curd-rice lunch, I ordered a small packet of cashew nuts. The cost of the 100 grams of so called branded cashew nuts was Rs150. I ended up paying Rs231. This has become a regular pattern.
 I understand that the algorithms of Blinkit and other Instamart companies penalise low-value and small-cart purchases. Apparently, there is also an evening and night surcharge. There is a weather surcharge when there is even light rain. Then there is the surge pricing of dynamic demand charges. So much so that the delivery charges vary depending on the size and time of the order and the weather.
To provide another example, if the value of the item you order is Rs100, the extra charges are likely to be Rs40, or 40%. If the cost of the product you have ordered is Rs170, the extra charges will be Rs70 or 41%. Only if you order goods worth Rs500 or more do the charges fall to 8%. Don’t be deceived by claims of free delivery beyond Rs500. Nothing is free with instant delivery e-commerce portals.
Instamart and Blinkit are profiting at the expense of the local retailer. It would be much cheaper for you to order all the requirements from the local grocery stores. There is no guarantee that the goods that arrive in eight or ten minutes are fresh and are within the expiry dates. Very often, when I have ordered the Karachi biscuits, they come with broken pieces in spite of their fancy packing. It is unsafe to order fresh vegetables or butter or other perishable goods from Blinkit and Instagram.
The Food & Drug Authorities in Mumbai raided a Blinkit warehouse. They found goods stored in very unhygienic conditions. The goods were stacked on the dirty floor with cockroaches and lizards on the premises. The Maharashtra FDA cancelled the licenses of the Blinkit depot in Mulund in Mumbai. The Goa FDA should conduct surprise raids on all the storage facilities of Blinkit and Instamart. They should probably also raid all the cloud kitchens. Most of the biryani and other so-called delicacies you order from Swiggy and Zomato are made in small, unhygienic cloud kitchens. Cloud kitchens are just cooking stations without any restaurants attached to them.
Significantly, reputed companies Zantye and Café Central are not tied up with Blinkit or Instamart. None of the reputed restaurants like Peep Kitchen or Kokum Curry are tied up with Zomato or Swiggy. Some eateries find the add-on money earned by Swiggy and Zomato is too high and do keep their own delivery boy, this way menu prices are hot hijacked too much for common people to eat.

REGULATING HEALTHCARE TARIFF
AND a few stray thoughts on when the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Healthcare is calling for regulation of the tariffs charged by private hospitals. The parliamentary committee has very conservatively estimated the average cost of simple procedures in private hospitals is Rs60,000 in contrast to the average of Rs6,000 in government hospitals. Normal delivery even in small private hospitals cost an average of Rs40,000 compared to Rs2,000 in government hospitals. Caesarean deliveries which are invariably preferred in private hospitals cost over a lakh as compared to Rs5,000 in government hospitals. The parliament affairs committee had recommended that private room charges should not exceed the room charges of three-star hospitals in the neighbourhood. At present, private hospitals even in Goa charge five-star hotel rates just for a room.
The charges for diagnostic procedure, doctors’ consultancy charges, are all proportionately higher depending on the cost of their beds. Even in a private hospital, you will pay less if you opt for their four-bed wards than the two-bed sharing room or the private room. Never make the mistake of rushing to the Casualty Wards called emergency wards in private hospitals. Before the resident doctor can even arrive, they should have tested your blood, conducted an ECG, and a host of other tests to be billed up course.
The last time I went to the Manipal Hospital emergency when I had a mild head injury I was billed Rs30,000 plus even before I was admitted. Another racket in private hospitals, particularly in Goa, is that they never give you an estimate in advance of the charges you are likely to incur. This enables them to keep billing you up as Goa’s taxi drivers do, but at much higher rates. Responsible hospitals like the Hinduja Hospital in Mahim in Mumbai have packages which you can choose from which cover all medical condition from fracture to stroke to heart and neuro surgeries. So you know how much the whole treatment costs. It is not widely known that it is mandatory for private hospitals to provide an estimate to the third party agents of medical insurance companies within 24 hours of your admission to the hospital.
It is widely known that even if you are on your death bed and you are beyond any hope of a cure, private hospitals will keep you in the intensive care unit to bill you up. They kept an 80-year-old super senior citizen in an unconscious state for over three months at the Manipal Hospital before she was transferred to the Goa Medical College, still unconscious.
The parliamentary committee has insisted that there should be a cap on expenditure with palliative care. This is an expression generally speaking used for patients being treated for last stage terminal suffering when mainstream doctors have given up and told relatives to take patient home and make them comfortable. If you are not able to do that at home the hospices for terminal care are there to help you out with patient care. The treatment is focused on minimizing pain with sedatives and painkillers without any invasive or expensive treatment.

NATIONAL COCKROACH PARTY
AND a few stray thoughts on the National Cockroach Party’s latest focussing on the state of government schools, particularly those in rural areas. The NCP has announced that from this Independence Day on August 15 it will launch a nationwide campaign to improve government schools.
It may be recalled that in the wake of the Jantar Mantar agitation in capital city Delhi, higher secondary students in large parts of the country, also began protesting – but this time against the poor infrastructure in government schools. It started with students in the Sarvodiya school in Madhya Pradesh demanding adequate teachers and disclosed they had only one teacher for the 150 students in the 11th and 12th standard. Students in the secondary schools which is 8th to 10th standard namely, the alpha kids born around the 2015, have also joined the protests demanding basic infra like benches to seat on instead of the floor, safe drinking water and basic toilet facilities.
The Central government has admitted that there are over one crore single teacher government schools in the country. In Goa alone there are more than 10,000 single teacher school where teacher handles all classes from the 1st to 4th standards. Though the new educational policy insists on smart boards which are internet-connected, in Goa they turn into blackboards due to chronic power failure. Even paid internet connections are erratic because the wires are connected to electricity poles. Frequently, the electricity department cuts the internet wire by service providers like Ethernet and the others. In the monsoon in any case this connections are not rainproof.
More and more students in Goa are shifting from government schools to the aided schools. The government only caters for poor migrant family children. The greatest attraction is not education but the mid-day meal. Abhijit Dipke and the National Cockroach Party are also planning to start a nationwide awareness campaign which is called “Public Kya Bolti.”
Incidentally, some chamcha lawyer has filed a case against Abjhijit Dipke in the Supreme Court claiming he has misquoted the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Suryakant on the terminology of cockroaches which he had used.

ASSONORA POLLUTION
AND a few stray thoughts on when the protest in Assonora against the pollution of the Par river. The residents of Assonora have been complaining that the Club Mahindra has been discharging its sewage and other waste into the river. They have complained to the Goa State Pollution Board that the hotel and other residential buildings have not used appropriate sewage tankers to transport fecal waste to the sewage treatment plants.
The Goa Human Rights Commission have taken cognisance of the complaint and has issued notices to the Chief Executive Engineer at the Department of Drinking Water, the members and secretary of the Goa State Pollution Control Board and the manager of the Club Mahindra resort in Assonora. This is not an isolated incident and there have been complaints that the starred hotels in Calangute and Candolim are discharging their sewage into the sea.
Similarly, there are allegations that resorts in Morjim are also dumping all their waste in the Oliver Ridley turtle beach habitats. It may also be recalled that there have been repeated cases of fish mortality at Mala lake in capital city Panjim.
Indeed, there was a Facebook post on fish being found coming out of overflowing sewage waters down 18 June road. The government should conduct a survey of all the water bodies in the state and do the needful which is urgently required in Goa.

TURKEY VAN RESCUES DONALD TRUMP IN TURKEY
AND a last stray thought on President of USA Donald Trump on a visit tour to Turkey when there was a security scare. Trump was rushed out of his Air Force One plane and reportedly shifted in a food delivery van in the wake of the claims that Iranian drones would target President Trump’s official plane, which is called Air Force One. American media are calling it Trump’s Turkey movement, as the food transport vehicle was being used to carry turkeys.

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