New Delhi: Zomato has decided to drop the word ‘pure’ from the mode and fleet of delivery vehicles it has launched that will specifically cater to those ordering from vegetarian-only restaurants. Earlier, after immediate backlash online, the company had also retracted the plan to have this fleet of drivers dress differently and use use green (rather than red) delivery boxes.
First launch as the ‘pure veg mode’, it will now be called the ‘veg-only mode’.
The word ‘purity’, when linked with dietary preferences in India, has clear casteist tones.
In a statement on Thursday (March 21), the company also said that the dietary habits of delivery persons will not affect whether they can deliver veg-only meals, and consumers will not be able to request drivers of a specific dietary preference.
Update on veg-only feature on Zomato –
AdvertisementWe wanted to share a few clarifications (based on the questions we have been getting over the last couple of days) –
1. Can customers choose to have their orders delivered by delivery partners with a certain dietary preference? Answer is…
— zomato (@zomato) March 21, 2024
Goyal claimed that a separate fleet was needed because the “smell” of non-vegetarian food may bother people. “…why did we need to separate the fleets? Because despite everyone’s best efforts, sometimes the food spills into the delivery boxes. In those cases, the smell of the previous order travels to the next order, and may lead to the next order smelling of the previous order. For this reason, we had to separate the fleet for veg orders,” he said.
This argument, on the ‘smell’ of certain food disturbing others, has been called discriminatory based on caste and religion. “One of the most important aspects of caste is food pollution,” A.F. Mathew, a professor at IIM Kozhikode, told The Hindu. “It will have to extend to whoever will deliver,” he continued. “What if there is a Muslim driver bringing in a customer’s vegetarian food? … Where is this going? Will Jains deliver for Jains, and Brahmins for Brahmins?”
In a 2018 article in The Wire, scholars Balmurli Natrajan and Suraj Jacob pointed out that “The extent of overall vegetarianism is much less than common claims and stereotypes suggest; survey estimates show that between 23% and 37% of the population of India is vegetarian. Thus, far from being a vegetarian nation, India is a meat-eating majority nation. The notion of ‘non-vegetarian’ and the discourse around vegetarianism, then, reflect the hegemony enjoyed (thus far) by the ‘minority’ vegetarian population.” Even most of the majority Hindu community, the authors stated based on government data, eat non-vegetarian food.
