Divakaran claims the government is putting things in place to make up for the absence of big retail corporates in the state. “We are going to have some 35,000 PDS shops use that space. We are going to add 17,000 more large outlets to the 3,000 that the State Civil Supplies Corporation now runs. Corporates can’t hope to tap the state’s huge rural market, the government can”.

The government has also decided to take on the corporate’s brand pull by setting up the state’s largest hypermarkets on its own, at Thiruvananthapuram, Kottayam and Kochi, Divakaran said. That is besides some 14 huge ‘People’s Bazars’ to come up in each district, selling provisions, vegetables and everything else for day-to-day living, “with appropriate price support” from the government, he said.