Days after Wal-Mart signed an agreement with Bharti Enterprises to enter the Indian market, several thousand retailers across the country held vocal protests against its plans.
In major cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Calcutta, hundreds of farmers and small retailers took to the streets , fearing that Wal-Mart could eventually undermine the small retailers that dominate the Indian market.
Shouting “Go home, Wal-Mart,” owners of nearby produce stalls joined union leaders to burn in effigy 10 international supermarkets, represented as a 10-headed pink-and-yellow demon.
Indian Business Majors like Reliance, the Tata family and the Aditya Birla Group are also making an aggressive push into retail.
Considerably a third of India’s agricultural produce goes waste because there are no proper storage facilities or transportation facilities for farmers who send their goods into cities. Big retailers are promising to change that so profits can trickle down, but nobody seems to know what the vegetable vendor who sits on almost every street corner in India will do when his customers move over to the big stores. Neigborhood stores that sell provisions may soon be similarly squeezed. Source