My take on Zomato’s manufactured incident involving violence between the delivery person and the customer

The recent Zomato incident has gotten a fair share of discussion. However, it misses one really crucial point.

Kamaraj supposedly waited for an hour, and then tried to keep the food inside the house to ensure that his delivery is marked. He is paid peanuts and has to ensure that every delivery is done well.

There’s a fair share of blame being put back on us, to be civil and empathetic to delivery persons. No doubt about that. But what’s the responsibility of Zomato?

Zomato will hit IPO anytime soon. It will be a success. But is there ever a priority for them to make sure that the delivery persons are paid well? In the name of the gig economy, they are made to work at the edge with hardly and employment benefits.

Their PR department is paid well, and they did handle it well. Kudos for that. But when would they pay their delivery people well?

Many men are celebrating this as they say women using VIctim’s card should be taught a lesson. Are these men using victim card as per their definition? Them crying that they are always falsely implicated? Isn’t it unfortunate, that instead of focusing on the issue at hand, they are using Kamaraj to prove to the world how men are victims of victim cards?

Our behaviour as individuals should be called out nevertheless but not at the expense of Corporates shifting all the guilt on us. We bear the responsibility to be civil and empathetic, but the delivery persons shouldn’t be earning so little due to Corporate greed that they are at the mercy of our tips. We should and can pay much better towards a much lesser disparity, but I believe this conversation shouldn’t take that form. In the name of the gig economy, the exploitation that is being done is at the core of the issue and until that is addressed the issue will never be solved.

I may sound cynical, and I am that. But also I see a solution. Social Enterprises. As tech centralises, we need more accountable tech companies. I am glad that many social enterprises are leveraging tech to provide conscious solutions, and hopefully, we will soon have a strong group of such enterprises who are sharing resources, distribution, etc. to amplify their impact. We grow stronger together. Will share more on this soon.

Here’s Zomato’s statement for reference: