One of the champions of organized retailing Reliance fresh has just opened in my area, which is one of the oldest localities in South Mumbai which uptill now was served by small individual vendors in an around the market of bhuleshwar. It is the first retail store which will sell food in an organized way.

Reliance fresh may just end up removing these vendors when consumer start buying in trolleys to avail all the discounts they can. Recently Economic Times reported how the big retail chains were selling cheap fruits and vegetables amid such food crises deliberately, and off-setting their losses by gaining on non-food items that the hawkers cant sell.

Such retail outlets have had to face ire not only in states like Uttar Pradesh, Orissa and Jharkhand but also in America, the father of such chains. America, the home to Wal-mart the biggest company in terms of revenues and having more than 5000 stores across the world but also in controversies about suppressing their employees from associating and for a dismal employee welfare record besides others.

This may be expected of a monopoly and since the ball is set rolling in India, we should try and avoid any such ills. There are many players in food retailing business – such as Subiksha, Big Apple, Spinach, Big Bazaar and the mammoth Reliance Fresh, but competition is still not present. These guys are also protected by preventing foreign direct investors.

Well why not open up retail for the foreign guys if it has to exist at all. With competition we may just avoid the short coming of a monopoly, shouldn’t we? In fact, organized retailing would be nice in the new developing centers such as New-Mumbai!