Delhi extends its shopping hours from 7 to 11pm to please its consumption-conscious citizens. But no government should restrict shopping hours in the first place. It smacks of the labor protectionism of France and Germany, where shopping hours are inconvenient.
Separately, Delhi has a late-night crime problem:
[T]here are others who think extending shopping hours in a city which remains extremely unsafe for women is an unwise move… “We have decided that women will work till 2000 hours and then the men will take over. We will not force our women to work late… But if we can make arrangements for them to travel late, and they want to work late, we’ll welcome it.”
The local government does restrict shopping hours in the US. Many communities even have blue laws which don’t allow stores to open on Sundays.
Fascinating, thanks — I’d never heard of these American ‘blue laws’ which restricted alcohol sales on the Sabbath. I’m against them in either country.
Communities like Bergen County, New Jersey shut down completely on Sunday even now.
Here’s somthing from another blog:
“I live in the blue law capital of America, Bergen County, NJ. NJ leaves blue laws up to individual counties and they have been retained only in Bergen. Virtually nothing aside from food can be sold in the county on Sunday, and unlike in other places a different day cannot be substituted. One municipality goes farther to prohibit any business from being conducted at all, including regular office work. I still do not know how these laws pass constituitonal muster, though it seems that they no longer have much to do with religion and more to do with traffic.”
http://columbia.housevirgo.com/000161.html