A countrywide protest is brewing in the trading community after the Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani signed an MoU with Amazon India on Tuesday to boost MSME exports with the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) asserting that it is like shaking hands with the East India Company.
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) is about hand-holding and onboarding MSMEs in Gujarat on the Amazon Global Selling platform. The Chief Minister had termed it his government’s proactive initiatives to boost the MSMEs.
The CAIT, a national platform of traders, is shocked that the State Government is seeking to prop up a “known law offender” against which central agencies like the Enforcement Directorate and Competition Commission of India have initiated action.
CAIT’s national president BC Bhartia and Secretary-General Praveen Khandelwal asserted that on one hand the CCI and the ED are conducting investigations against Amazon for allegedly indulging in anti-competitive practices and violation of e-commerce rules as well as FEMA, and on the other a BJP-ruled State is helping Amazon build its business.
Bhartia and Khandelwal asserted they would take it up with BJP President J P Nadda and Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal and apprise them “of the political consequences of this act of the Gujarat Government.”
The CAIT, which is otherwise known to be close to the BJP, asserted that not only of Gujarat but traders across the country are “feeling cheated at the hands of the Gujarat Government for shaking hands with such a company.”
Bhartia and Khandelwal said the Gujarat Government was rendering products made in the State captive in the hands of Amazon. In an angry statement, they asked, “Does Gujarat Chief Minister know the on-ground operations of Amazon or before taking such a decision, has he gone through various charges levelled against Amazon? Has he consulted the Union Government?”
They went on to assert that Rupani “has acted just like a ruler of a State shaking hands with the East India Company, which had sinister motives of making the country an economic slave.”
The CAIT has decided to take this up nationally and build a “national campaign to protest against multinationals engaged in e-commerce.”
It may be recalled that the CAIT had recently accused Infosys chief Narayan Murthy of helping Amazon’s “dubious practices in India.” They alleged that Murthy-funded firm Cloudtail is the biggest vendor Amazon in India.
