A necessary slowdown

Dropping 10-minute delivery addresses safety concerns

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The nudge by the Union Ministry of Labour and Employment to quick-commerce platforms to move away from the “10-minute delivery” promise signals a shift in India’s ecommerce landscape.

By urging platforms to abandon an ultra-tight delivery benchmark, the government has acknowledged that hyper-fast delivery targets create perverse incentives that can compromise road safety and impose extreme stress on delivery partners. In that limited but crucial sense, the move, which follows a nationwide strike by gig workers last month, addresses a genuine and visible concern.