Wal-Mart: To Be or Not to Be...in India?

Yesterday the opposition party of India, called for a general strike (called a BANDH) of all tradespeople to protest the recent decision by the ruling coalition to allow such big box stores as Wal-Mart and Carrefour into India.  This development would herald a huge change in how India shops, as currently there is a very specialized system of trade shops.  If you want electronics, you must go to the electronics bazaar.  Likewise for such goods as plastic, jewelers, textiles, etc.  India does have a big box store model in its Big Bazaars, and the occasional department store or mall, but they do not dominate the commerce scene as does the small, family owned shops that carry only a certain category of goods. 

My immediate reaction is to be in agreement with the Opposition Party and lament the loss of the small family-owned stores.  Indeed, I watched the demise of commerce in the town where I grew up in southwest Iowa, then due to the advent of the opening of a mall in nearby Omaha and all the chain stores contained within the mall, chain stores that operated on the economy of scale, thus offering the same goods as our small town, but at lower prices.  People voted with their feet, or their cars in this instant, and the Mall won.  After the downtown merchants were down, Wal-Mart appeared in our little town to swoop in for the final death blow to any remaining economy.  What remains for the people of that community is a commerce of cheap, low quality, expendable goods and not much else.  It was sad to witness. Of course the farm crisis of the 1980s carries a large part of the blame for the demise of prospering small town economies in Iowa as well but the advent of big box stores and discount stores carries part of the blame too. 

In Iowa City I chose to patronize the locally owned, service-oriented beautiful book store of Prairie Lights and avoided the Barnes and Noble or even the behemoth Amazon, which certainly carried the same goods for much cheaper, but didn’t have all those pleasant, knowledgeable staff that P Lights does.  That was important to me, as I liked the human connection part of the transaction, as well as the service, and seeing in the flesh that which I was contemplating purchasing.

That was my immediate reaction, but then I began setting up a household here in Jaipur, and bore witness to the inefficiency of the lack of one-stop shopping.  After many attempts at finding simple items like a broom (still haven’t snagged one) or a clothes drying rack (I’ve given up and am going online) I wanted to click my heels 3 times and be transported to my local Target store.  For years I watched college students flock to our local Target and fill their shopping carts with everything one would need, or want, to run a household.  Brooms, cleaners, food, medicine, make-up, hardware, electronic appliances, toys, clothing, linens, kitchen supplies.  You want it, Target has it.  This method of shopping does tend to lead to shopper fatigue from all the choices, but imagine if you will needing to know which bazaar or shop would carry any of the above items.  That necessitates some serious insider knowledge, and even then the local people who aided me were not sure at times where to send me.  My aching feet soon illustrated the gross inefficiency of such a system, and made me seriously rethink my negative views on one-stop shopping.

It’s a complex issue with no clear winner.  On the one hand Wal-Mart and Carrefour provides low cost goods to people who could benefit from a lower cost, but those same people would also be in competition with Wal-Mart for customers in their small shops, so they would inevitably have less income to dispense at their competitor’s stores.  I don’t pretend to be savvy about economics and I realize there are probably several omissions and flaws in my thinking, but at the end of the day, I think a country has to decide if it wants cheaper goods at the expense of some of its own people’s livelihood. The U.S. decided very quickly, and one sees the result of our communal decision in the empty store fronts of small-town main streets, but also in the ability of Americans to buy more goods for less.  I’m just more confused now, but my tired feet and dusty floor tell me that at the least I need to revisit my position.