For more than the last 5 years, Amazon, Walmart-owned Flipkart and many other foreign-funded e-commerce companies have indulged into all kinds of unethical business practices with an objective of taking control of not only the e-commerce but even the retail business of India. Their sinister designs have greatly vitiated the e-commerce landscape of the country, said CAIT. In view of such a situation, the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has launched an ‘E-commerce purification week’ from June 14 to June 21, 2021 which is gaining massive support from thousands of trade associations in the country. CAIT National President B C Bhartia and Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal jointly said that during the e-commerce purification campaign, the trade organisations will handover a memorandum to the District Collectors of all States in the country.

 

On the other hand, the trade delegations will meet the Chief Ministers and Finance Ministers of their respective States urging them to set up a monitoring mechanism for e-commerce trade for ensuring strict implementation of FDI in e-commerce policy of the Government. Simultaneously, the trade associations will send an email to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal urging for an immediate direction to the CCI for starting an investigation into the business module of Amazon and Flipkart, issuance of a fresh Press Note removing the flaws of Press Note 2, and setting up of a Regulatory mechanism at the Centre to monitor e-commerce business in India. CAIT has also declared to launch a digital signature campaign in the country on this issue.

 

The exponential growth of usage of smart phones in India is contributing majorly in expansion of e-commerce business.. The trend shows that now the middle and lower middle class in the country has adopted e-commerce as a source of meeting their requirements. The trade leaders, Bhartia and Khandelwal said that the way foreign companies like Amazon and Flipkart defied all the laws of the country, adopting predatory pricing, deep discounting, loss funding, controlling inventory, and adoption of preferential sellers have killed the small businesses in India. Bhartia and Khandelwal jointly said, “The game of capital dumping by these so called marketplaces has affected the entrepreneurial skills and human capital of the country which is a cognizable offence. Making the human capital of any country to sit idle, displacing them from their businesses and encroaching upon their livelihood by these capital behemoths needs to be immediately looked into by both Central and State governments.”

 

Bhartia and Khandelwal said that the e-commerce business of the country has become toxic due to illegal and unethical business practices by Amazon, Flipkart and other foreign funded e-commerce portals. Therefore, there is an urgent need to purify the e-commerce landscape so that even a small trader can also adopt and accept the e-commerce business as an additional avenue for raising his income and make Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Atmnirbhar Bharat’ campaign a success, the trade leaders said. More than 40,000 trade organisations in the country will join with full force to make the purification campaign a success.