The government’s complete reversal of position on April 24 — namely, not allowing e-commerce players to retail ‘non-essential’ items, while allowing neighbourhood shops to sell them — is worrying. Only on April 15, when the Ministry of Home Affairs came up with its list of economic activities that would be allowed during the lockdown period, it made concessions for e-commerce retail, allowing them to sell non-essentials. The obvious reason was that online retail would involve minimal contact between people. It shows that even at a time of unprecedented crisis, both health and economic, the Centre’s decision-making process is perhaps being influenced by extraneous forces.

What led to this U-turn in a matter of days? Is the government now of the view that it is safer for people to frequent local stores than transact online?

The April 15 decision, expectedly, led to protests from physical retail stores. A traders’ group, which, in ordinary times has been taking on multinational retail giants for their alleged malpractices in India, immediately demanded that the decision be reversed. Another retailers’ group demanded that physical stores be allowed to home-deliver goods just like their online counterparts.

If the government, in response to the brick-and-mortar retailers’ demand for a fair-playing field, had relented and allowed physical shops similar flexibilities as those extended to e-commerce in the April 15 notification, it could have been interpreted as a timely decision — needed for ensuring that the country’s trading community, providing livelihood to millions, is not left behind.

However, the Centre’s move to suddenly distance itself from e-commerce companies is hard to understand. The fact that the MHA’s latest order allowing neighbourhood shops to be back in business completely ignores online retailers, signals that somewhere the logic to provide a level playing field may have made way for lobbying.

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