e-Paper
India’s top food delivery app on March 20 shelved plans to start a dedicated vegetarian fleet on fears it could jeopardise the safety of its drivers and put customers at risk of eviction.
Food consumption is deeply political in India, where many practising Hindus maintain that a vegetarian diet is necessary to maintain “purity”.
Some residential associations (RWA) in India will lease only to people who say they are vegetarian, and Hindu activist groups have in the past forcefully demanded the closure of restaurants serving meat during religious festivals.
Many Hindus at the top of the faith’s rigid caste hierarchy also avoid eating at restaurants that serve meat, even if vegetarian alternatives are offered.
Zomato, the most successful platform for home food deliveries, announced plans on March 19 to cater to that market by rolling out a separate, strictly meat-free service.
The fleet was to be easily identifiable, with its motorbike riders wearing green uniforms instead of Zomato’s usual red corporate livery.
But that, in turn, rendered customers who eat meat identifiable through the red fleet that delivered food to their homes.
The company revised their plans a day later after online backlash, with founder and chief executive Deepinder Goyal admitting the company had failed to think through the safety implications.
Mr Goyal said having a separate, colour-coded fleet risked drivers getting into altercations in residential areas that maintained a de facto vegetarian policy.
“Our riders’ physical safety is of paramount importance to us,” he wrote in a post on social media platform X.
“We now realise that even some of our customers could get into trouble with their landlords, and that would not be a nice thing if that happened because of us.
“While we are going to continue to have a fleet for vegetarians, we have decided to remove the on-ground segregation of this fleet (and) using the colour green.”
Mr Goyal’s announcement of the new fleet was roundly criticised on social media, with many warning it risked entrenching food-based discrimination.
“It wasn’t enough that our food is considered a sin to eat, us filthy for eating it and to be discriminated for cooking or ordering it at home. Now we watch as RWAs with their history of great decisions allow only ‘pure veg fleet’ to reach houses,” a user wrote.
“If Zomato uses different coloured boxes to deliver veg food, bigoted landlords can harass tenants if they see non-green colours. Whatever assurance of veg fleet if needed must be kept inside the app only,” another user cautioned.
Questions were raised about the potential extension of the veg-only policy to delivery personnel. “So how long before they decide the driver of veg food must also be a vegetarian?” asked one user.
One user warned the new colour-coded system risked outing Zomato customers as covert meat-eaters, potentially upsetting their landlords.
“Many tenants in societies and standalone houses don’t disclose to landlords that they eat meat,” the user wrote in reply to the scheme’s announcement.
Nearly 40 per cent of Indians abstain from eating meat according to a Pew survey – by far the highest rate out of any country.
AFP, Indo-Asian News Service
