FORGOING the religious tradition of frugality, Eid-ul-Fitr brings in its wake a rush of consumer extravagance. People belonging to various strands of society make a beeline for the bazaars to empty their wallets to get the best that money can buy. The buying power of the consumer is, of course, variable, but what remains constant is the purpose behind spending.
Old shoes and already-worn clothes are a big no-no, as are so many non-essentials comprising our wardrobe and dressers. Ask most of those people how they will spend their Eid, and the response will be matched by a lacklustre expression of the face. “Oh! Eid is the most boring day. All I do is sleep through it. Really boring, really dull,” quips a young Eid non-enthusiast. But, whether it is a non-enthusiast or a die-hard Eid observer, they all have one thing in common — consumption.
A month preceding Eid, shopkeepers take out their ledgers to record sales, which outnumber the amount of wares on display. “We have to constantly keep on contacting our wholesale dealers to restock. On an average, I can say that I make around Rs40,000 to Rs50,000 per day during the Eid shopping zeal,” reveals a fabric shop owner at the Cavalry Grounds in Lahore.
Known for selling the most exquisite silk in the city, the shop-owner claims that women do not think twice before buying a three-piece, silk shalwar-kameez and dupatta ranging from Rs3,000 to Rs10,000 for an occasion like Eid.
“It surprises me sometimes to see some of them not even trying to haggle with my sales assistants. Imagine somebody spending Rs50,000 in a day on clothes and not even thinking about abusing money, which, by the way, is good for our business. We can’t afford to have people thinking economically. That would bring the shutters down on my business in no time,” he remarked gleefully, grinning from ear to ear.
The estimated population of Lahore is more than eight million, divided into the upper class, the upper middle class, the middle class, the lower middle class and those living below the poverty line. And each stratum of society spends accordingly on Eid. According to a pre-Eid cursory survey, the super rich spend, on an average, nearly Rs50,000 on clothes, accessories and Eid cuisine, while the poorer lot is believed to spend not even Rs500 to get the feel of the Eid celebrations. Such is the nature of consumption diversity! And such is the wide gap between the rich and the poor. But somewhere in the middle, we have the enthusiastic middle and the lower middle classes which actually sustain the market trend.
A typical middle class housewife would find solace in going to Ichra or Anarkali Bazaar to stay within her Eid budget. “I have four children and my husband works as a tiller at a bank. Each year because of the high prices, we seem to be spending beyond our means on Eid. I don’t buy anything for myself, neither does my husband. But how can we keep our children away from enjoying the one day which means a lot to them?
“After dipping into my savings, I manage to spend Rs5,000 to Rs6,000 on Eid, which includes children’s clothes, Eid money given to relatives and entertaining guests. That is a lot for people like us who get Rs15,000 at the end of each month in salary,” says a housewife.
The lower middle class spends less than Rs4,000 with the poor left to look around for hand-me-downs from the upper and the middle of the upper classes. If the spending pattern of people is anything to go by to ascertain a metropolis’ economic strength, then Lahore is a rich city with little room for the poor.
Earlier in the year, the Federal Bureau of Statistics had conducted a sample survey of Household Consumption Expenditure (HCES). According to the survey, there has been a 35 per cent increase in the average monthly consumption expenditure of households all over the country. That should explain the overall spiralling cost of living standards in the urban areas.
The consumption pattern reaching its peak points on Eid is just one of the indicators of the irregularity of our economy. At the time of conducting various poverty reduction surveys, the Eid consumption graph of Rs50,000 declining to Rs500 should be taken seriously by our economists, who claim that the incidence of poverty at the national level has declined by 4.2 per cent.
