Consumers in Goa being curbed of freedom to choose?

The recent comments, protests and gheraos by various lobbies of shopkeepers, traders and overnight associations of various dubious bodies which have sprung up in the city of Margao in Goa are making an attempt to stop exhibitions and sales under the pretext of losing their business to these open fairs. Last week such an outfit from Margao gheraoed the Chairperson of the Margao Municipal council seeking his intervention in stopping these exhibitions.  

While the demand from these associations is downrightly absurd, these traders suffer from a crisis of not living up to the modern times in  a changing world. Economics and purchasing wisdom are both  dictated by price and better quality of the product in question. The traders need to self-introspect whether they are able to satisfy the consumer on these two important factors and identify the other reasons responsible for the consumer to shift loyalties from them to the fairs, instead of using illegal and violent methods of redressal.

Consumers have the democratic right to choose and purchase whatever he/she wants and this cannot be curbed by such senseless protests from a handful of people who want to shower their might on the people of Goa.

Do the consumers of Goa need to protest in retaliation of such vain moves of these traders and come out in the streets or gherao municipal officials so that these exhibitions  stay? Instead, the civic bodies and the panchayats should ensure that sanity and rule of law prevails when dealing with the unjust demands of vested interests.

Consumers are the final judges. What the traders in Margao or Goa  need to do is compete with the exhibitions. Instead, with their current actions they are exposing their sense of "high price shopping" which they want the Goan consumer to forcefully continue despite them being non-competitive. In other words they probably feel that Goans should live expensively just because they have their whims and fancies to heap on us.

The Municipal bodies in Goa should therefore never bow to the wishes of a handful of these people who oppose exhibitions and sales and the consumer forums of Goa should also intervene to ensure that democratic systems are never hijacked by the demands of a select few.