FDI in Retail: Wholesale victory

But what about employment, the anti-retail-FDI brigade will ask? Apart from the fact that organised retail seems to be hiring more people per square foot, and at much higher salaries, than kiranas (Bharti's Easyday hires 19 persons for each 2,600 square foot store as compared to 2-3 for a 500 square foot kirana)—this is, it is true, not the same as employment per rupee of sales—the fact is that employment changes all the time in dynamic economies. Between 1993 and 2004, for instance, the number of supervisory staff fell from 2.4 million to 1.5 million and clerical workers from 8.5 million to 5.3 million while construction workers rose from 5.4 to 13.1 million, hotel/dhaba workers from 1 to 1.5 million, maids and domestic help from 2.2 to 2.9 million and hairdressers from 1.3 to 1.8 million…

If it wasn't about kiranas, farmers or employment, what was the debate about? It was always about political posturing and dealmaking, so the person with more strings to pull, more favours to dish out, won the day. That's an important lesson for the UPA as it goes about rebuilding the credibility it spent the last 8 years destroying.

sunil.jain@expressindia.com

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