Slashdot Mirror
India Curbs Power of Amazon and Walmart To Sell Products Online (nytimes.com)
The Indian government dealt a surprise blow on Wednesday to the e-commerce ambitions of Amazon and Walmart, effectively barring the American companies from selling products supplied by affiliated companies on their Indian shopping sites and from offering their customers special discounts or exclusive products. From a report: If strictly interpreted, the new policies could force significant changes in the India strategies of the retail giants. Amazon might have to stop competing with independent sellers and end its offerings of proprietary products like its Echo smart speakers in India, its top emerging market. For Walmart, which spent $16 billion this year to buy 77 percent of Flipkart, India's leading online retailer, the new rules could hamper its strategy of selling clothing and other products under its own private brands and prevent it from using its supply-chain expertise and clout with retailers to drive down prices for Indian consumers.
[...] The government posted the changes, which go into effect Feb. 1, without warning on Wednesday evening in New Delhi, while much of the business world in both countries was on vacation. [...] Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India initially courted foreign companies to invest more in the country after his 2014 election victory, but his administration has turned protectionist as his party's re-election prospects have dimmed in recent months. Mr. Modi has increasingly sought to bolster Indian firms and curb foreign ones through new policies, including one that requires foreign companies like Visa, Mastercard and American Express to store all data about Indians on computers inside the country.
[...] The government posted the changes, which go into effect Feb. 1, without warning on Wednesday evening in New Delhi, while much of the business world in both countries was on vacation. [...] Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India initially courted foreign companies to invest more in the country after his 2014 election victory, but his administration has turned protectionist as his party's re-election prospects have dimmed in recent months. Mr. Modi has increasingly sought to bolster Indian firms and curb foreign ones through new policies, including one that requires foreign companies like Visa, Mastercard and American Express to store all data about Indians on computers inside the country.
Fuck Amazon.
https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...
How about we curb their anti-free trade asses ability to apply for H1Bs?
trump must immediately impose harsh consequences on these stinking indians. start with cancelling all it contracts that have any indian involvement.
>store all data about Indians on computers inside the country.
To be fair, the GDPR mandates that personal data of EU citizens must be stored in computers inside the EU borders. Nothing surprising here.
India is a terrible place to do business. Better off staying away.
The easiest fix is to play the H-1B card.
Don't want American companies as competition in your country ?
No problem, how about we don't allow Indian workers into the H-1B Visa program . . . . at all ?
( It is, pretty much, the only thing we import from India )
Wouldn't want the competition destroying American jobs now would we ? :|
requires foreign companies like Visa, Mastercard and American Express to store all data about Indians on computers inside the country.
implementing such a policy isn't protectionist. It is just common sense. After all, as an American living in the US, I wouldn't want my US financial data being stored anywhere else but the US.
The summary lacks a citation to the statute or regulation in question, and my subscription package happens not to include The New York Times. But if information about transactions involving Americans must be stored only in America, and information about transactions involving Indians must be stored only in India, that appears to leave nowhere to store information about a transaction between an American and an Indian.
The rules, if applied with strict interpretation, would pretty much shut down any modern retailer of any type, not just the big guys. It essentially bans having fixed arrangements with suppliers - of having supply chains period.
Virtually all chains have deals they've made with suppliers. Enforced strictly, this bans modern commerce.
Therefore, it will not be enforced strictly. It will be enforced selectively.
This is the kind of thing you come up with as a gift to government officials. The public reason is just an excuse. It is a beautiful setup for a graft. Pay the right folks the right amounts, no problems.
asperger's detected
After reading what he has actually put in place, it sounds quite reasonable. It is not that amazon is not allowed to sell in india: It is that foreign-owned companies can not sell direct to the public. The can still sell goods as a wholesaler to retail, which sells to consumer. This sounds like a good idea, as it allows external companies to bring in goods to the country, whilst the countries economy will benefit from the sales of the externally owned products.
If amazon is considered akin to ebay - a place that allows seller and buyer to make a trade via a third party - I expect it will continue as consumers will continue to use it as they already did, as personal exchanges and post.
If amazon is considered as a distribution company, I expect they would simply make a sub company in india and continue as normal.
So I fail to see how this will apply well to amazon.
The other example about having to have an indian datacentre is also reasonable. Like every other country, keeping data local and in your juristiction is common sense for a country.
As an American IT pro, I don't much like India for obvious reasons. But this is the right thing to do.
Corporatism != Free Market
the first time anyone heard the term "deep state" was in [The New York Times'] reporting on Egypt. Now they claim anyone who mentions "deep states" is a paranoid nutter.
Wherever you see "deep state," read it as "institutional memory of the civil service" and see if the article still makes sense. Is that a good rule of thumb?
Fuck Walmart
Authoritarian populism has no other tools in its box.
I wonder what would happen if Amazon did a study and found that complying would lose more money then they make in that country and just didn't sell to India. Would the citizens there care and scream at their govn't for doing this, or would it just allow Indian companies who are something like Amazon to flourish? (this is a serious question)
I do agree with the person above who guessed this is really to be selectively used and a "legal way" for govn't workers to obtain graft.
This is where Bezos begins to regret his confrontational stance with the executive branch.
There's a very good chance that this all goes away for less than $1 million in bribes.
These rules actually seem rather sensible to me.
A) The prohibition against special discounts prevents either company from discounting their merchandise in an anti-competitive manner that would drive out local businesses.
B) The prohibition against selling exclusive products makes it so that if Amazon wants to sell Echo and Fire devices in India, then they have to allow Indian resellers to stock and sell the products as well. The same would apply to any of their other private labels (like Amazon Basics). This prevents them from having a monopoly on sales of anything carrying their brand in India. This is sensible separation that should exist between Amazon's manufacturing business and it's internet storefront business.
We've gotten so used to anti-monopolistic policies not being enforced in the US that we've forgotten what they even are. No company is supposed be allowed to become an Umbrella company that makes, sells and supplies everything.
How much has Amazon's manufacturing arm benefited from the huge exposure platform provided by their storefront? I couldn't tell you the last time I went to Amazon's front page and didn't have a giant Fire or Echo ad shoved in my face.
How many businesses has Walmart put under every time it moves into an area and used anti-competitive price structures built off of paying their employees the least amount possible along with the fewest benefits they can get away with?
Alexa unleash the cows. Free burgers with every purchase, thatâ(TM)ll get em hooked on books.
If India or China do it, then everyone is happy. If US does it, then everyone is up in arms about it. WTF
what do you expect from a country that still practices slavery?
Imagine you are a citizen of India and you want to buy an Amazon Echo. Sorry !
I wouldn't be happy about that.
The message I would get is people think I am too incapable, too stupid to know how much Amazon is oppressing me.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India initially courted foreign companies to invest more in the country after his 2014 election victory, but his administration has turned protectionist as his party's re-election prospects have dimmed in recent months. Mr. Modi has increasingly sought to bolster Indian firms and curb foreign ones through new policies, including one that requires foreign companies like Visa, Mastercard and American Express to store all data about Indians on computers inside the country.
The current BJP govt did not get protectionist all of a sudden. E-Commerce policy changes are not an important topic for any partys re-election prospects.
There are far more serious issues for Indian electorate...farmer distress, rising unemployment, promises not being kept, effects of super stupid demonetization, GST implementation etc. Add social polarisation of the country with Hindu-Muslim division being played for the BJP's right wing Hindu support base .
Stray cows roaming around is probably more of a problem for Indians than whatever E-commerce stuff. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/07/16/amp-stories/why-india-has-million-stray-cows-roaming-country/
What is wrong if payment processors are asked to keep data inside geographical boundaries? (Tho technically it doesn't make much sense.) It cannot be seen as "protectionist" or "isolationist".
Tat Tvam Asi