Bengal in particular should be very welcoming to retailers because its labour-intensive, rice-led farm sector growth has plateaued and it has been apparent for some time that agriculture marketing is a big problem in the state. Just as the decision to get big-ticket industrial investment in the state was the CPM’s strategy to counter flattening farm growth, encouraging big retail is also a reformist response. The CPM’s leadership understood what politicians nationwide need to say aloud: farming cannot be transformed in India in isolation from modern economic practices and farmers cannot have a better future in isolation; the supermarket is the farmer’s friend.
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