Reportedly intensifying protests against amazon and flipkart, several traders from across the country staged a day-long hunger strike, led by Confederation of All india Traders (CAIT). Recently traders demanded the government to take immediate action against not only amazon and flipkart but also other e-commerce companies working in transport, logistics, travel, home buying, consumer durables and other sectors.
Furthermore traders want the government to ensure e-commerce companies comply with the FDI policy. Perhaps praveen Khandelwal, Secretary General of CAIT told the other major demands that traders have include an immediate roll-out of a national e-commerce policy, a regulator or ombudsman to regulate e-commerce business and the roll out of a national retail policy. Apparently CAIT also alleges that amazon and flipkart are indulging in preferential seller system and more than 80% of their sales are made by just their 10-15 preferred sellers since last many years.
Moreover CAIT wrote to Commerce minister piyush goyal urging him to ask both e-commerce giants to either ‘follow the FDI policy in letter and spirit immediately or wind up their business activities from India’. Perhaps this came after Goyal said at an event said that every FDI funded e-commerce player in the country has to follow the FDI policy both in letter and spirit and domestic e-commerce companies will have to follow the law of the land so that businesses of small retailers are not destroyed.
