Zomato recently announced a "pure veg" delivery fleet. This is a clearly casteist practice. The association of purity with vegetarianism is a historical act of casteist oppression. 

Zomato’s rollout of the “pure veg” (now referred to as “veg only”) fleet is aimed to equip customers to pick from a curated list of restaurants that serve only vegetarian food and excludes eateries that serve any meat or fish. The riders tasked with bringing food from such eateries will be exclusively delivering from “pure” vegetarian establishments only. The plan was to distinguish the “pure veg” fleet riders from the other Zomato riders by getting them to wear green shirts instead of the Zomato red.

 

 

This move was vociferously protested against by different sectors of the internet on the grounds of casteism, privacy concerns of the consumers, and the safety issues that the Zomato delivery partners. In this petition, we the undersigned, focus on the larger structural and social issue of caste that underlies many customer preferences of vegetarian only food and the so-called acquiescence of Zomato to include this preference in their business operations.

Casteism is a deeply ingrained social issue in India, affecting various aspects of life, including dining preferences. Historically, the caste system has been justified using ideas of purity and pollution, with vegetarianism often associated with purity and higher status castes. In this context, Zomato’s decision to dedicate a fleet exclusively catering to the vegetarian interests in the Indian setting is nothing but further entrenching of the existing casteist ideas and practices. Despite the Indian Constitution abolishing untouchability (one of the worst expressions of caste system) and forbidding any form of its practice, Zomato’s “veg only” fleet will contradict it in principle.

In the past, when a Zomato rider had been targetted for their Muslim identity the company had taken a stand to uphold their espoused values of plurality and diversity. Deepinder, CEO of Zomato, had said, "We are proud of the idea of India - and the diversity of our esteemed customers and partners. We aren't sorry to lose any business that comes in the way of our values." Further, in 2019 when a protest about wage structure was hijacked into an issue about the Zomato riders having apprehensions of delivering beef and pork Zomato had then made a statement that it was impossible to ensure that vegetarian and non-vegetarian preferences could be factored into delivery logistics.

Zomato’s “veg only” fleet can become the start of larger trend of entrenching casteist practices and other discriminatory practices in the garb of customer preferences. The platform economy and the gig workers engaged in the sector are part of an ecosystem that is exposed to the vagaries of the market forces. The lack of regulation of this sector adds to the phenomena of market forces entrenching existing social systems that causes marginalisations and discrimination. In this manner, it causes unsafety for people belonging to marginalised identities.

 

 

 

For the reasons iterated above, we demand that Zomato completely roll back this casteist policy on the veg-only fleets, to continue to defend the rights of its partners and customers.  

Co-Petitioners: Kuhoo Tiwari, Anannya Parekh, Arshiya Kochar