We celebrate 75+ years of self-rule, but walk through any sabzi mandi or street corner vendor and you’ll see the same old royal treatment — the kind where your ₹100 worth of tomatoes magically turns into ₹92 worth of actual weight. Every day. Everywhere.
Over 85% of India’s fruit and vegetable retail is unorganized. And it’s no secret: 7–10% under-weighing is routine. That's not a rounding error — that’s a ₹1.5 to ₹2.5 lakh crore daylight robbery every single year. It hits the poorest the hardest. The ones who count every rupee. Yet no one blinks. No enforcement, no regulation, no public pressure. Even when someone dares to complain, the complaint disappears faster than the missing 100 grams.
So tell me — if colonial rulers did this, we’d call it economic exploitation. But now that we do it to ourselves, is it just business as usual?
We replaced the rulers, but kept the rigged scales. And somehow, still call it independence.
