, Columnist
The Dark Side of India’s Digital Gold Rush
Millions of Indian consumers are being fleeced online.
Photo: Sajjad Hussain/AFP/Getty Images
Digital commerce in India has become a theater of quiet deception. Sellers cheat by design, and in the rush of a 10-minute grocery delivery, hundreds of millions of consumers rarely notice they are being fleeced.
In 1919, John Maynard Keynes marveled at the Londoner who could order by phone “various products of the whole earth” from his bed, while sipping his morning tea. A century later, India has democratized this convenience through cheap smartphones and a national system of instant mobile payments, overtaking the US to emerge as the second-largest e-retail market after China by number of shoppers.