In India, if you are in one of the towns or metros, you may now go to an air conditioned store to buy spinach, butter, wheat etc. This is retail boom. This is gold rush where the big corporate are enterprising to get a share of consumer spending

The dream is to make big profits on the basis of “farm-to-fork theory” and economies of scale the justification. To supply directly from the farms to the consumers, removing every one in between.

Economies of scale resulting from lower transaction cost of bulk handling, removal of middle-men and increased specialization, eventually bringing down prices. So when someone buys chocolates he may get a kilo-gram of wheat free!

In India, most of the employment and production comes from the un-organized sector which is usually looked down on. Imagine the impact of this, on small farmers and small food vendors.

Inequality is widespread, increasing and such a fuss. A lot many throats get choked; screaming inequality, a lot of time is spent, discussing inequality, a lot of guns battle, fighting inequality. But if we take a look around we can easily conclude that our wealth or income is simply determined by what we have to sell! Bread or diamonds, management skills or casual labour. This explains it all but do we understand?

Organized food retailing would sweep away millions of people involved in selling fruits and vegetables. It would simply displace them all from the only means they have for a livelihood along with their labour leaving them alone with casual labour.

On the contrary, governments draft No-hawking laws which only gives the cops to collect bribes, called hafta in common parlance, meaning weekly bribes from the poor street vendors.

Economies of scale may bring efficiencies in our economic system but there are many efficient points. And to decide on one is just a matter of value judgment and not only of the elite class. Economies of scale also need’s to weighed against distributional effects.