Mumbai: ‘It will be a loss for us if this happens’

The delivery workers claim Zomato’s plan will impact their income

For the better part of the last year, Arunkumar Mishra has been a delivery service personnel with the food delivery company Zomato. When asked if he had heard about his company's plans to introduce a separate fleet of riders for orders from ‘pure vegetarian' restaurants, he said he had heard about it but nothing has been communicated to him so far. "It will be a loss for us if this happens. Most people order non-vegetarian food, so those asked to pick up orders only from vegetarian restaurants will not make as much as others," he said.

Mishra is a vegetarian, as is everyone else in his family. He recalled how when he had first started delivery work, the idea of carrying meat in his hands made him uncomfortable. "That is not how I think anymore. Once I overcame that fear, it did not matter what I was carrying in my hand. I'm still a vegetarian, but I have no problem now if someone else is eating non-veg near me; that is not how it was before," he said.

There have been instances, though only a few, when other residents in buildings where he went to deliver food have asked him if the food is vegetarian or non-vegetarian. Another delivery person with Zomato, Sarfaraz, also said the move will adversely impact the riders, reducing their income substantially on some days. "There are people who do not eat non-veg food on some days in a week or on some festivals. On those days, the food orders will be mostly veg. And likewise, on days like Eid, the food orders for non-veg food are a lot. People will lose out on income," he said.

Mukesh Kumar has been working as a delivery person for the past nine months. "In a day, one person delivers 25 to 30 orders. Out of them, very few are orders from veg hotels but missing out on those will be a loss of a couple hundred rupees for us every day," he said. All of them said they make about Rs 25,000 per month from deliveries Kajal Kapoor, a resident of a building society at Bandstand, said the move by the company is welcome as people have individual food preferences. "My society is largely cosmopolitan and diverse, so I doubt if it will make a difference to most, but I'm sure there are still people who are vegetarians here and for them, it will matter," she said.

Dr Sylvia Karpagam, a public health activist and researcher who has written on caste and food, said people have a right to their food choices. "The problem in the first place is when we bring in the concept of pure or impure in it; by saying one food is pure we're implying there is something impure about others because of the food they consume. This is casteist," she said. According to her, the company is catering to that ideological customer base who are at a caste and class privilege.

Earlier, Zomato had also introduced the idea of having separate uniforms: the colour green for delivery persons delivering from vegetarian restaurants and red for others. They rolled it back after public backlash on social media. "They admitted this would put meat eaters at some kind of risk. It would also likely put the delivery persons at risk," she said.

Tuesday
Day Zomato announced unique green uniform for Pure-Veg fleet

Wednesday
Day Zomato recalled it