Banana
at throw away price at Reliance, oh sorry its Reliance Retail Price popularly
called as R.R.P not M.R.P,
Big Baazar, Pantaloon, Vishal Mega Mart selling
household wares at their own
mega-marts, the global giant Wal-Mart making an entry into the Indian retail
market promising to sell kirana and clothes and every thing at low prices
always-it seems paradise is moving around Indian consumers . But how long will
paradise continue?, or will a few months of ‘happy-deals’ lead to a lifetime of
monopolistic markets and manipulations by corporate giants .
It is
estimated that for every 1,000 employment opportunities generated for urban
graduates as Wal-Mart salespersons, 15,000 poor people will go out of job as
Indian cities will have no need of pheriwallas, subziwallahs, fruit-sellers,
and local kirana shops.
Retail trade contributes around 10-11 per cent of
India’s GDP and currently employs over 4 crore people. Within this, unorganized
retailing accounts for 96 per cent of the total retail trade. Traditional forms
of low-cost retail trade, from the sole trading shops and kirana stores to the
handcart and thelawalas, together form the major pie of this
sector. Since the
organized sector is less than 8 per cent of the total workforce in India and
millions are forced to seek their livelihood in the unorganized sector, retail
trade being an easy venture to enter with minimum capital and infrastructure
needs, acts as a kind of social security net for the unemployed. Organized
retail sector has witnessed tremendous growth in India in the last 10-12 years
and is growing at a much faster rate than the overall retail sector. This trend
of growing share of organized retail trade inevitably causes harm to small
retailers and badly affects their livelihood.