Addressing the media here on Wednesday, TNCPSA president R Srinivasan said that the association expected the existing stocks to be wiped out in 10 days, and the pinch would be felt in retail outlets subsequently. Johnson & Johnson sells soaps, powders, oils and other products for infants and also sanitary napkins.

The All Kerala Distributors' Association State committee had agreed to cooperate while the Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka associations were also getting into the act, Srinivasan said. The Maharashtra stockists are also to be apprised on the issue. ``We expect distributors from the north to get in touch with us once we start the agitation,'' Srinivasan said. Apparently, the nationwide awareness among distributors took place withTNCPSA highlighting Nestle cheating on the weight of instant coffee in its packs (the undue enrichment at the customer's cost was also highlighted by Ahmedabad' famous consumer research organisation CERC) as also in the controversy of the total fatty content in Hamam soap of HLL.

The current agitation came about with Johnson & Johnson notifying stockists that it would cut out 50 per cent of its cash incentive of 3 per cent from July 1999 while the incentive would be totally done away with from January 2000.

The stockists who number 150 in Tamil Nadu claim that this cut represented a steep fall of 40 per cent in their income. For most of them, this was the main and often only line of business. Johnson & Johnson was giving them a regular margin of 5 per cent and an incentive of 3 per cent, the total coming to 8 per cent.

The company was having a sales of Rs 25 crore in Tamil Nadu. In the past many years of distributorship with the company, stockists were pressurised with heavy dumping. But with the TNCPSAcoming on its own, having more than 5,000 members under its fold, the company was forced to retract its policy and take away unsold goods.

Stockists allege that the removal of the incentive was not the only problem they faced. J&J often filled in their own numbers in the blank cheques offered to the company for invoicing (as has been the practice). Stockists were never informed of the extent of invoicing or the figure that was filled into the cheque, but came to know when the cheque was presented to the bank. Worse, they never got the goods for the cheque. The products usually went elsewhere, occasionally to other stockists. The company which always had its own norms of arbitrary invoicing always had arrears of goods to send to stockists, Srinivasan said. This practise also created sales tax problems for the latter.

TNCPSA said they had documentary evidence for this malpractice, and even company officials admitted as much to them. Stockists were also asked to pay upfront to retailers for displays ofcompany products and for sales representatives they employed at the behest of the company, but these sums were never refunded as was the agreement with the J&J.

Long periods of credit extended to retail outlets did not facilitate cash rotation and therefore the margins were important, TNCPSA members said.

``We are not asking for more, but we will not settle for less,''Srinivasan said.