Flip-Kart or Flip-Sides: Isn’t Flipkart’s Decision To Quit Airtel Zero Now, Pure Hypocrisy?

Flipkart should probably change their name to flip-sides after withdrawing their hands from Airtel. They were the first ones to go against net neutrality by supporting Airtel zero. When the whole online community was protesting against TRAI, Flipkart was the only website which showed support as it was constantly in talks with Airtel for a tie-up. Here are a couple of tweets by the CEO of this company, justifying the murder of net neutrality –

Flipkart soon faced the heat after making this move. People started giving the Flipkart app 1 star rating on iOS and Android app store. If Sachin Bansal ever thought that the public is stupid to ignore the motive behind this step, then he must have learned his lesson by now.

And now they have again changed their stance. Flipkart has pulled out of the deal and now they are showing themselves as heroes who are ready to go to any extent to support net neutrality.

They seem to have a perception that all its users are kids who don’t understand anything. If that would not have been the case, then, they should have apologized instead of justifying themselves at every point of time.

This is the statement given by Flipkart after seeing the outrage from the public –

We at Flipkart have always strongly believed in the concept of net neutrality, for we exist because of the Internet. Over the past few days, there has been a great amount of debate, both internally and externally, on the topic of zero rating, and we have a deeper understanding of the implications. Based on this, we have decided on the following:

1) We will be walking away from the ongoing discussions with Airtel for their platformAirtel Zero

2) We will be committing ourselves to the larger cause of Net Neutrality in India. We will be internally discussing over the next few days, the details of actions we will take to support the cause

3) We will be working towards ensuring that the spirit of net neutrality is upheld and applied equally to all companies in India irrespective of the size or the service being offered and there is absolutely no discrimination whatsoever

(Source: NextBigWhat)

Flipkart is now bragging about how concerned they are about net neutrality, and it is now that they have realized how important it is. If they were so much in support of net neutrality, then why did they go with Airtel in the first place? It’s not that Flipkart was not aware of what that deal would bring about. Only after seeing people’s strong reaction, Flipkart decided to back out.

Flipkart is doing no good in this whole net neutrality fiasco. It is good that they have opted out of Airtel Zero, but the way they are showing their stance is wrong. They screwed up and they should have accepted it, the way they did after their Big Billion Day Fail. They should have been modest and should have apologized first for going against net neutrality, instead of being so hypocrite about it. What they have now turned it to, is just a marketing gimmick which will definitely fail. If Flipkart thinks that they can mold us the way they want, then it’s only going to be them who will suffer, not us. And please, stop acting like a savior now.

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Vaibhav Lall is the Chief Editor of Rise for India. He is responsible for creating and managing content for the website that can influence the mass and make a difference in our country.