The jaadu of Mayawati in the North, the kithaata of the Karunanidhi family with the Maran family in the South, and the hyperactivity of Narendra Modi‘s moral police in Baroda’s art schools in the West, as usual, pushed a vital piece of news from the East to the margins. Namely, the vandalism of vegetable vendors at four newly opened Reliance Fresh outlets in Jharkhand’s capital, Ranchi.
The mention of Wal-Mart gets the Left, the media, and some vested business interests all hot under the collar. What will happen to the neighbourhood kirana stores and angadis when these transnationals set up shop, they ask? It is a valid question, but an equally valid question, as demonstrated by last week’s incidents, is what happens to the sabzi and tarkari wallahs at the hands of our own giants?
Questions: Should big businesses like Reliance be in the business of selling vegetables and fruits? Will they drive out millions of hawkers, vendors and sellers? Has the Centre openly pushed these voiceless self-employed into the hands of doom? Or, because we get our fruits and veggies in well-lit, well-displayed, branded boxes, and because they are tom-tommed to be cheap and fresh, is the customer, king?
refer to the question ‘….pushed these voiceless self-employed into the hands of doom’
Atleast in bangalore ( esp Jayanagar ) , they are NOT
1. Voiceless : they speak louder than you and in tamil
2. Doom : all have some access to some of the indicator of eco growth /prosperity , namely, cell phone, 2 wheeler , a home, direct access to local corporator, MLA , 24 hrs water supply….
I would welcome reliance/subiksha enter into the market and we have the choice to buy veggies from them rather than the tamil hawkers.
Reliance is most welcome to sell anything they want..i will more than happy to buy vegetables – incl avarekayi and badhnekayi – from Reliance..much rather prefer to buy from such places than veg vendor who i think cons me – either on price, quality, quantity.
Reliance, Subiksha, Hopcoms whoever – most welcome !
Reliance Fresh (RF) outlet opened recently on 8th main, 16th cross Malleswaram. The cross road was last tarred 16 years ago. And just before the outlet opened, the road was tarred.
RF is selling (refregerated) vegetables at half the price as the hawkers and not all of them are FRESH. Already the number of customers thronging the store has slowly come down and many in my neighbourhood have come back to the Tarkari-Gaadi.
Ah, the vengetable vendor cheats, and Reliance is the angel protecting the consumer! Tell me another. This is the company which smuggled in a machine within a machine; which bent every rule in the book, stole official secrets and budget documents, manipulated the stock markets, bought off politicians, bureaucrats, journalists.
If all that is OK in the name of business tactics, why crib about a housewife haggling with an overpiced haagal-kayi seller? At least it adds to the colour on our streets.
We were safe as long as Dhirubhai’s company was happy to rip off the government by lubricating the hands of the neta-babu. Now, it seems, they are putting their hand into our wallets too. Of course, the laws of the land do not disallow this. But the question is, do we are literate, urban dwellers have no responsibility in protecting the dispossessed and the underprivileged?
To say the vendor cheats is to be very loose with the language. What is the vendor’s scale of cheating compared with the scale of Reliance’s cheating? How many millions of vendors will it take to match Reliance’s cheating? And, hey, what is the cheating? It’s called margin.
Our big companies should be ploughing money into big, life-changing things. Great research, cutting edge products that put the fear of god in competitors across the world, etc. But our Tatas and Birlas and Ambanis find it so easy to derail the tarkari gaadis and upset the applecart of those earning a few rupees a day.
Those who keen to see small traders unemployed, must be ready to face rise in crime rate. Will you keep quite if your kids go to bed hungry, day after day. Where is the social security for them. So if economy is only interested in attracting big players than make sure you and me are small players in one form or the other.. ready to be get crushed both finacially and socially. Security and employment should not be our demand.
It is going to be retilers revolution rather than retail revolution–It is pathetic that the metro elite -the rootless wonderswho are parasitic– men with mangalsutra of company ID hanging on their neck— do not think of millions of families of retailers who will be papurised by this act by so called retail giants–
It is Adharmic and Asuric–Majority o retilers are above forty /illiterate and so the question of alternate livelihood is not there–
Who cares–when indic civilisation is measued by foot falls in malls we are finished– but the retilers anger will grow and we will read about sucide by kirana/street side vendors– The metro elites can have debate in 24 hours channel–Should retail merchants hang and die or consume poison and die–SMS “y” for hanging and “n” for poison– Results can be discussed in the late evening with India experts from Delhi–
The road side vendor lobby first killed many Vegetable ‘shops’ across mysore. First I thought they are farmers selling direct thus cutting the middlemen. Compare the prices. The road side Gaadiwala price is same as the small veg shops. After a few closure both are co existing now. So, Reliance is most welcome. They claim that vegetables remain fresh as their shops are air conditioned. So you need to immediately shift it to your freezer to save it from rotting. Because psychologically you dont go there to buy quarter kg tomato and Re.1 worth Soppu. But the prices are great. And the choice of Mangoes on display is superb.
Reliance is most welcome.
Any thoughts on how Reliance manages to price the vegetables at the rates they do? May be we should worry about the poor farmer being ripped off. If we do not support farmer cooperatives like Hopcoms, there is very little hope for the farmer who then might get ripped off my large corporations. After all, we are not consumers alone. As slightly aware citizens don’t we have some sort of social responsibility?
Just read an write up in a newspaper (maybe PR by Reliance). How they sourced Mango Ginger from Wayanad (kerala) to be ‘exported’ to CHennai and Bangalore warehouses. They paid the farmers more than the agent would have and that too in hard cash (not a credit slip). So the poor farmer is happier than ever. The affected are the middlemen. But the situation may change once the middlemen are totally out. then it will be Restrictive Trade Practices. ITC, Reliance etc are also into leasing farm land paying the farmer in advance (for him no risk of crop loss etc) using hightech fertilizer for increased gain (which the farmer would not have afforded to). The other part of the story is that this approach is slowing killing the soil (Fertilizers, Genetically engineered seeds etc).
Every thing is a hype. When Metro entered the Market everyone rasied hue and cry. It will kill our whole sale market. It will throw thousands of our people who are dependednt on this. What has happened nothing. Likewise Reliance is enjoying the initial curiosity. Slowly it will fade and people start buying from same TALLO GADIS.
Reliance will sell vegetables and fruits cheaper in the beginning and force the corner shops and Kirana stores to close their shops. THEN they will increase the prices! This has happened in UK before. The farmers will have no other shops to supply and will be forced to supply their produce only to Reliance.It’s a win-win situation for Reliance-Reliance both from customer and the supplier of produce , as they can dictate both buying and Selling Price. This will happen after a while for sure.
Well when I started to write this comment after reading all the others above, I was really worried about what going to happen to my beloved country… especially when I read those comment which were supporting Reliance as a new brand retailer of fresh vegetables…
I was working before in a company which is the worlds third largest retailer… and I know what it really done to UK now, and what are the pains of the present day small retailers in UK(www.everylittlehurts.org.uk/).
Imagine for a well developed country like UK if the situation is like this… then what about our country where we have a population of more than 100 crore and most of them are farmers and middle class men…
Whenever I thin of why our country is like this and why we are not like other developed countries, the answer I get at the end is that because we are very selfish. We only think of our satisfaction and needs and never care of others.
Today Reliance may pay the farmers with hard cash or we may get things very cheaper. But what will happen to those family which are depended on small grocery/vegetable shops where there will go what they will do…. Today we read in newspapers of farmers committing suicide tomorrow we read both framers and ordinary men committing suicide. Today Reliance will start with small retail outlets, tomorrow the retailers like Reliance will capture the whole market and make the common people life more miserable. Remember when the slave trade started in Africa, it stared much like barter system where African slaves were exchanged for Gin bottles, guns, mirrors…etc by European traders with the consent of local African leaders and at the end every one knows what happen…
Today when ever I here of the word Retail in India I can foresee the “Retail Slavery” which is slowly taking its root.
For a country like India the Retail world would be a deathblow for all petty shops and small retailers, poor farmers…etc. Though the retail industry may look very fancy for us it has its own ugly face. I am not saying that our countries should never improve or have lucrative malls and retail outlets, I am only trying to say that we are not yet prepared…
Today we can see the rich are getting richer and poor are getting poorer, what will happen if Retail industries spout ? it will be still worst.
When I was in UK there was a documentary aired on BBC called “ The Great Indian Miracle?” The program mainly focused on the booming Indian economy and its Multimillionaires and poor people. It was really a painful program for an Indian to watch. It showed, how our India had become the home of highest number of Multimillionaires in Asia and one of the fastest growing economy, how our middle class, the poor and the farmers are exploited and what still makes India has a booming economy.
Well I do understand this program doesn’t make any direct implication to the Retail industry but when we talk of Retail it will be another meaningless economic boom without considering the poor and the needy. Please do have a broader way when we support these type of Trades
Please forgive me if my comments hurt any of your feelings
Well if Reliance does dominate market in next few years . After that it will come around . There is a new trend catching up in US like a ‘SANTHE’ to buy locally grown vegetables . So you dont drive far to buy vegetables
and eat fresh Garden Vegtables . Neighbours have started to share garden produce as well . Isnt the same concept we had like 30 years back in towns and villages ( even today ) .
We welcome Santhes …like Yeshwanthpura Santhe . Please list any Mysore Santhe as well .
There is a daily Santhe after JSS Hospital, Opposite exhibition grounds where they sell vegetables, fruits…
Freedom of trade and commerce is a constitutionally guaranteed right.
It is as much the tarkari-gaadi/ pakkadraste angadi owner’s right as it is Reliance’s. Job loss? tragic, but inevitable. I’m sure the invention of cars drove many Tonga drivers out of business. So should we have banned cars?
I’m sure the Internet hurt many businesses which couldn’t afford to be ‘online’, so should we ban others from going online as well?
Tonnes and tonnes of food goes to waste in this country because of inadequate storage facilities. Should we stop Reliance from building cold chains because we are so attached to our neighbourhood tarkari-gaadi?
All of the above article and its responses are mostly conjecture based on personal experience and extrapolation of the same. We don’t know what the effects will be. We don’t know if the Indian consumer will start buying avarekaayi from Reliance or will stick to the tarkari-angadi next door.
Vegetable markets in certain parts of selected streets on Saturdays and farmers produce markets in a borough have been operating for a long time in Europe ( Britain, France and Germany). These markets have been attracting large number of clients these days despite the supermarket chains putting up ‘metro supermarkets'( mini versions)in high streets of cities and towns in the above countries. The street markets and farmers produce markets sell all their vegetables and fruits by evening, and prices are slashed nearer the closing time. The trend of farmers bringing their vegetable and fruit produce to the cities has accelerated recently.
When I was worrking in America, in my city, there were Saturday vegetable markets in particular places in the city, and I used to buy large bagful of string beans, Okra ( bende) and fruits at a fraction of price of supermarkets.
I am not so sure about the economics of Reliance or whoever else opens these stores and how the existing vendors are affected by them. But if these chains take off, it will add to the sad homogenization of our palate. I wonder if these large chains would be willing to accomodate local tastes as they might not get economies of scale in purchasing etc. What would happen to our Eeranagere badanekaayi? Our Rasapuri maavu? Matti guLLa? Mangalooru soutekaayi? I suspect we will be swamped with nameless brinjals and Alphonsos.
We would all have to end up getting used to North Indian palate (in the same way as it is Diwali and Deepawali any more) – they have the numbers, after all they multiply like amoebas. Just a save a few paisas, we are not only sacrificing the livelihood of thousands of farmers and vegetable vendors, but also our eating habits and culture. Oh well, who cares….these days it is “hep” to embrace everything that is capitalistic.
An Interesting video
An interesting video, tiger attacking mahout, what happened next?
The rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer? Who can blame Reliance for getting into the retail business valued at thousands of crores of rupees.
With the Indian market moving towards freedom a lot of previously unorganised sectors are attracting the big companies hoping to make money.
Shining India growing at 8% annually for past 7-8 years, corporations moving into food retail,gold retail,etc.. With all the profits these companies make every year do they give back anything to the community? Do the millionaires and billionaires have a sense of charity?
While I personally slightly inclined towards the currently popular ‘Tallo-Gadi’ because of almost zero-investment-and-zero-pollution (no electricity, gas etc. burnt!!!), world tends to take a natural path of evaluation –
– One of my friend has been with Monsanto for many years and managers contract-farming. Basically, they work with farmers to give technical inputs, which crop is best, when to change the crop etc. and also they fix the price in advance. At least in the last 6-8 years, he has not seen exploitation of farmers by the company. I guess, it is not just Reliance, there are whole lot of them (Bharti, Heritage, ITC etc.) and thus there is a market dynamics even in that category
– Pricing – if we observe the whole-chain, there is a production, preserving, transporting and retailing. While Reliance kind of company tend to have really sophisticated logistics, they also save big on wastage (in other words, they wont let the fruit/veg rotten-and-waste)
– Organized Retail has its own + and – . People employed by FoodWorld kind of retail are really poor (economically -and- education) If not for this kind of job, they would have been mostly domestic-help. So, to that extent, FoodWorld kind of jobs are far better than domestic help (all knows the reason).
– Finally, NOTHING CAN BE SUSTAINED, IF IT IS NOT ECONOMICALLY COMPITENT MODEL. THAT IS WHY GREEN-TECH is taking its own time to catch-up
ERR, that’s new RMC Yard that’s been shifted from New Sayyaji Rao road to there.
Ranga. Reliance is welcome as long as they are Kannadigas right. They are not. COme on man.. protest.. protest. Drive them out of Karnataka. By the way, you went to US! You betrayer.. I thought all this life time you have been painting English letters with Black paint!!
Bottom line: Dont tell us what all you did in America!
Rama
You are really a shallow person probably because of your upbringing in Kerala. As I said we have a place for you in a special institute in Bangalore!
The Fabmalls, Foodworlds, etc., did not close down the local small shops on our streets
Though there are strong responses from either sides on this matter, i feel this market changes is the part of the great indian retail boom. Which cannot be avoided.
There has been always a resistance for changes alteast from some quarter of the society. For instance Computerisation, globalization and so on… Hope even this would also joins the list in the future.