Reforms are made real in the weeks before they take effect, and GST 2.0 is now inside that window. With the September 22 switch two months out, the machinery is being assembled where reforms actually live — in billing systems, staged inventory, and the re-stickering of the corner shop.
The dual-MRP sticker rules are the referee. For a transition window, packaged goods must show both the old price and the revised one, so the cut is legible to the shopper rather than absorbed as margin on the way. It enlists the consumer as the enforcement mechanism a tax department cannot scale to every counter.
Corporate India is positioning to compete on the pass-through rather than pocket it. The festival stocking surge is the behaviour of firms betting that whoever drops the price fastest gains share as the reset collides with Diwali demand.
The reform's larger bet is that a simpler, lower structure lifts consumption and formalises the informal — a claim falsifiable at exactly the point of sale the sticker rule governs. The basket-tracker runs through the reset on our economy desk.
