We Are Like This Only

Though it affects only a small proportion of people, I believe that Apple, in a blatant example of profiteering, has priced the Iphone in India at almost 4 times the current market price in the US, its home country. Partly this is about 'skimming the market', i.e. taking advantage of the initial craze that surrounds a new product (and that too from the stables of a so-called 'iconic' and aspirational brand like Apple; but that apart, I think it points to a deeper malaise: the apathy, the callous smugness and self-obsession of the urban upper and upper middle class in India. It is perhaps ironical that around the same time as the Iphone was launched in India at its ridiculous price, statistics from the World Bank tumbled out: an estimated 42% of Indians live in proverty, i.e., as the World Bank defines it, on less than $1.25 per day. In other words, in one year they earn less than half of what a new Iphone costs in India.

It is not my case that the rich should not live well, or that we should all live frugal lives and give away the rest. But it is shameful and symptomatic that a country where there are so many poor people (some people say the world's largest collection of the poor), is seen as a market that can absorb higher, and not just higher---but 4 times higher---prices than the prevailing market price in the world's most developed economy. The rich play here, like the rich every where; but perhaps like in Russia, they play here with an extravagance that is as schizophrenic as it is ugly, given the ground reality of millions of our countrymen.
If you are one of those incredibly lucky people whose hard work has been rewarded by pecuniary gain (or you've won the 'Ovarian Lottery' in terms of a good inheritance) and have cash to burn, then by all means you can, and should, live it up. But don't hand over your extra cash to a profiteering and greedy US company which is making a fool out of you, while millions of our countrymen starve.
Parting note: some people have been saying in the press that apparently, the revenue per user is less in India so the cell phone companies cannot bear part of the Iphone's cost, hence jacking it up for the consumer. This is nothing but false propoganda that the press has been parroting ad nauseam. If revenues are less in India, so are costs. And nothing prevents the two service providers from entering into lock-in arrangements with their users. In any case, the whole argument is specious because as any first year CA Student will tell you, by now the Iphone should have costed a lot less, because most of its fixed costs and initial development costs have already been recovered from the US market.