The Case of Wal-Mart has to be seen in the light of the US experience. Wal-Mart is selling low cost goods produced by China mainly, and other third world countries such as India, Bangladesh, Bolivia, etc. The presence of low cost fragile but attractive goods from China is so high that they have flooded out all other mfrs systematically. A second more important point is the highway system and the immense sprawl of homes that makes walking down to a nearby grocery store an impossible thing. The public opinion has veered to close the inflow of Chinese goods in the US so all kinds of lobbies have sought to portray the labour practices of Wal-Mart in a bad light- there is a labor legislation which is active and can tie up Wal-mart in a flood of class action and other damage suits. The condition for Wal-Mart to move to India are to provide the Indian consumer with "high quality Chinese goods" at "reasonable prices" Thus they would seem to address the upscale middle consuming classes at prices lower than the present Malls but better or equal to the US dollar prices. All this will mean is that it will become more difficult for the local manufacturer and large distributors of shoddy goods at lower prices to compete with Wal-Mart. The way out is not to curb Wal-Mart but to make it easy for the local Indian Manufacturers to make the appropriate investments in quality mfg. and free them up from the inspector-permit and direct tax demons. In view of the poor conditions of the roads I do not think it will kill the local Kirana shops. If the existing goods distributors continue to distribute substandard goods and the local general stores continue to hawk them then gradually they will find the consumer moving to these malls- Wal-Mart or no Wal-Mart.
