Ecommerce and its discontents

It has been almost a year since Piyush Goyal, Union minister of commerce and industry, expressed his concerns about how the ecommerce boom might impact 100 million small retailers across India.

- CHINTAN GIRISH MODI

While launching a report titled "Assessing the Net Impact of E-Commerce on Employment and Consumer Welfare in India" — published by the Pahle India Foundation —in August 2024, Mr Goyal said that ecommerce is here to stay "but we have to think very carefully and cautiously about its role".

Referring to the decline of mom-and-pop stores in the United States and Europe, he asked, "Is predatory pricing good for the country?"

Vandana Vasudevan, who studied at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad and has a PhD in urban development from the University of Grenoble, explores this question in her book OTP Please! Online Buyers, Sellers and Gig Workers in South Asia. It is based partly on her research with Janpahal, a Delhi-based NGO representing informal workers, which conducted a survey involving over 5,000 workers from more than 30 Indian cities.

She also interviewed a number of people who buy and sell online to get a well-rounded picture.

The book does a good job of presenting how ecommerce giants harm local businesses.

One of the examples provided is of a small business owner from Kerala who sells spices, honey, pickles and other organic food products on Amazon.

He says, "Selling on Amazon is a kind of trap. Because they decide how much sales they want to give you, not the customers."