Manik Bose

Vendor's ire against Reliance<

At least three major cities saw protests in May against Reliance, India’s largest corporation, entering the business of retailing fresh vegetables and fruits through its brand Reliance Fresh. In Ranchi and Indore, the protests had political backing and turned violent. The protestors, mostly street vendors, fear the company’s low prices will destroy their market.

While it is too early to know if their fears are founded in reason or hype, the protests also stem from the fact that they feel cheated by a government that is in a hurry to promote large retail businesses and refuses to keep its promises made to small vendors and retailers, who control about 95 per cent of the country’s overall retail business.

India has an estimated 12 million street vendors in its cities—the 2004 National Policy For Urban Street Vendors pegs it at 10 million—and roughly 2.5 per cent of each city’s population is engaged in vending on streets.

“About one-fourth of these vendors sell vegetables and fruits,” says Madhu Kishwar, senior fellow at the Centre for the Studies of Developing Societies, Delhi. But “there has been little progress on the 2004 policy, which recognised the value of services street vendors provide and the state’s duty to protect their rights”, says Kishwar, who was among the people pushing for the policy.

•  Lucrative destination

Who is to take the hit?
“We want a level playing field,” says Arbind Singh, coordinator of the National Association of Street Vendors of India in Patna. “There is no government recognition, credit availability or institutional support for street vendors. They have to wage daily battles with the police, municipal authorities and local goons, and bribe them on a weekly basis,” Singh says.

“See this against the single-window clearance for the industry, and you’ll realise our grievance. Like industries, we too generate employment and offer services. Why should we be discriminated against?” asks Basant Haryana, leader of a street vendors’ union in Jaipur. “Our protest was peaceful. It wasn’t led by narrow political interests. Rather it came from those fearing loss of livelihood,” says fellow union leader Ghanshyam Kotwal. “The Ranchi protest turned violent due to goons infiltrating our rally,” says Kaushal Kishore of the Jharkhand Educated Unemployed Footpath Vendors’ Association. “We have very little, and that too we will lose to competition that has unfair government support.”

Singh says the retail chains’ low prices are because of their ability to take losses over years—leading losses—to out-price competitors. “Once the small players are gone, they control the market and dictate prices.”

Retail rush
Many visible corporate brands are into the retail business: Reliance, itc, Bharti, Big Bazaar, Godrej and Subhiksha. India has not allowed fdi in multi-brand retailing. But international behemoths like Wal-Mart, which has a deal with Bharti, are raring for joint ventures. (Wal-Mart is world’s largest retailer and the second largest corporation. Labour unions, women’s rights groups, and grassroots organisations have long argued that the reason for Wal-Mart’s cheap prices is how shoddily it treats its employees. Wal-Mart had to leave Germany and South Korea because it did not get the kind of room for its policies as in the us and other countries.)

Fresh fruits and vegetables (ffv) are a small part of this retail juggernaut. “Even if retail chains do very well, they will capture only 10 per cent of the ffv market in another five to 10 years,” says P Chengappa, professor of agricultural marketing at the University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore.