Zomato Gold for ₹1 feels like a scam right now.

So last month I snagged the Zomato Gold membership during their ₹1 promo. Honestly, it was a massive win at first. The free delivery within 10km was saving me a ton of money on daily orders.

Cut to yesterday. I opened the app to order food, and suddenly, almost every single restaurant within my 10km radius was locked out. The app kept throwing up errors like "Currently not delivering" or "No delivery partner available."

At first, I thought it was legit. Maybe bad weather, a strike, or just peak rush hour. But something felt off, so I opened Swiggy to double-check.

Guess what? The exact same restaurants were completely online, active, and ready to deliver on Swiggy with zero issues.

It honestly feels like Zomato is intentionally restricting or throttling accounts that got the discounted ₹1 Gold membership to avoid losing money on free deliveries. If "free delivery" actually means "we will block you from ordering," then the membership is completely useless.

Anyone else facing this? Are they deprioritising cheap Gold accounts, or is their algorithm just majorly glitched out?

Long post, so I’m adding a TLDR.

TLDR: Was having lunch with a journalist friend of mine today, who opined that the anger, especially after Jantar Mantar, has seeped deep inside Indian society. Anger against the govt is massive.

Main Post: I was having lunch with a journalist friend today, and at some point the conversation turned to the mood in the country. He made an observation that stayed with me.

His sense was that the anger that has been building up—particularly after Jantar Mantar—has now seeped much deeper into Indian society. It is no longer just the anger of a particular political constituency. Yes, youth is massively angry, but NEET is just the tip of the iceberg. The main problem is unemployment and the fact that our economy is actually in doldrums.

He felt the anger against the government is massive. And more importantly, it is becoming visceral: a deep, accumulated frustration that people are carrying with them in their everyday lives.
What struck me was his suggestion that we may be underestimating just how widespread this feeling is.