Forget the infamous Indian Standard Time. India is a nation that now dislikes delay. It has sent missions to the moon and built a digital payments empire; now it demands coriander in 10 minutes and summons toothpaste as if it were a medical emergency. We are becoming a scroll-and-click nation. We scroll for meaning. We click for comfort. We expect both before the kettle finishes boiling. In our bustling cities speed is no longer an achievement. It is an expectation. If groceries do not arrive at once, something feels wrong with our civilisation.
The 10-minute delivery culture tells us less about technology and far more about ourselves. At a primal level, human beings have always liked convenience. What is new is our intolerance for even microscopic inconvenience. Waiting, once a normal part of life, is now viewed as a design flaw.
Quick commerce companies—Zomato, Swiggy, Blinkit, and Zepto—simply held up a mirror to our collective impatience and said, “We see you. And we can monetise this.” In the process, impulse replaced intention. Desire stopped being a feeling and became an emergency. Hunger now has a countdown timer.
Once upon a very recent time, let’s say during the pre-app period, buying milk meant walking to the shop. The walk digested yesterday’s dinner. The shopkeeper offered milk and mild gossip in equal measure. There was community. There was a conversation. Now there is only a notification. If it does not ping quickly, we begin to suspect that there is something wrong with our horoscope.
Let’s understand this clearly: technology is not the problem. The mind is the problem. The same mind that once waited for nirvana for lifetimes cannot wait 10 minutes for toothpaste. We speak of patience in philosophy and practice impatience in groceries.
Desire has always existed. But earlier, desire knocked politely. Now it rings the bell continuously and tracks the delivery partner on GPS.
The quick commerce companies are not villains. They are excellent students of human psychology. They discovered that modern hunger is not in the stomach—it is in the mind. And the mind does not want food. It wants certainty. But reflect quietly: when your chips arrive in 10 minutes, who travelled at what speed? The delivery partner performs a kind of modern tapasya—austerity through traffic. He conquers potholes, pollution, and unpredictability so that you may conquer boredom. When convenience becomes instant, compassion must become a casualty.
The Ministry of Labour and Employment’s draft rules under the four labour codes aim to extend minimum wages, health coverage, occupational safety, and social security to gig workers. After warnings that extreme delivery promises were compromising safety in an industry employing millions, companies have begun quietly dropping the 10-minute bravado that converted roads into race tracks. Efficiency without empathy is merely acceleration toward madness. We rarely ask who absorbs the cost of our speed, because the app interface is very polite and does not encourage such questions. This is why the government’s recent intervention deserves applause—not just a slow handclap.
Not everything requires Blinkit velocity. Some things—perspective, prudence, and even pizzas—are best allowed to arrive in their own unhurried time.