For the past few years, India’s e-commerce businesses have been witnessing the influx of billions of dollars: this raises a question as to whether or not skilled workers can benefit from the sudden and massive growth.
Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Geneva is a non-profit organization with a focus on improving international trade, human rights, and labor standards. The organization staged a meeting in Geneva involving discussions about the growth of e-commerce businesses in developing countries like Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mauritius, Panama, Peru, Tobago, Trinidad, Venezuela, and the Dominican Republic. Representatives from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and The World Trade Organization (WTO) also attended.
Discussions over the slow shift of trade to online commerce in today’s developing countries and the different areas where such countries are lacking were topics of discussion. The meeting also involved discussions related to mobile penetration, digital literacy, access, and Internet connectivity in relation to e-commerce growth in the same countries. All of the nations mentioned earlier have to lobby the World Trade Organization in order to derive any benefits from the shifting trend. Strangely, in India, necessary talks on how technologically driven businesses can improve communities in small business clusters and communities are wanting. Thankfully, some countries in Latin America are demonstrating appropriate concerns.
In the 2015 “Information Economy Report,” relased by UNCTAD, the documentation refers to India but a few times. Per Torbjörn Fredriksson, a representative of UNCTAD, it is difficult to get quality data from India. Therefore, reporting accurate e-commerce potential becomes problematical.
In Madhya Pradesh, the Chanderi group consists of roughly 3,500 households, all of which have practiced the art of weaving silk for hundreds of years, including saris. The latter example is a single illustration out of more the roughly 2000 skill based groups and 545 handloom-weaving groups in India to date. Unfortunately, the groups face a limited market reach, inadequate educations and equally inadequate healthcare; indifference and are commonly exploited by shady intermediaries. The same groups endure inferior civic services, a volatile infrastructure in terms of government, a near absence of employment alternatives and empty promises.
After presenting his model, Osama Manzar, a meeting attendee, demonstrated how over the course of five years, Chanderi had witnessed massive e-commerce advantages, and members of UNCTAD hoped to duplicate such successes in other developing countries. Such change could only be implements with the introduction of health facilities, postal services, financial institutions, stores, educational faculties and micro-enterprises allowing access to the Internet. The introduction of digital tools and Internet connectivity can be part of a holistic approach to induce cultural transformation through the development of a stable and steady economic environment.