Parliament tussle: Opposition motion against FDI in retail defeated in the Lok Sabha

"Consensus means general agreement and not unanimity," he said.

Participating in the debate, BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi said his party was for "retail democracy and not retail dictatorship" and warned that people would not tolerate such an action.

Govt lists facts, BJP targets fence-sitters

(Express News Service) The Opposition and government battled it out in the Lok Sabha over FDI in multi-brand retail on Tuesday, with Leader of the Opposition Sushma Swaraj warning that it would lead to more unemployment, impoverished farmers and dissatisfied consumers. In his forceful rebuttal, Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal contended that the government had enough safety nets in place and the decision would actually result in better infrastructure while eliminating middlemen.

Both sides threw barbs at each other over changing positions on the issue but Swaraj made a more political speech, obviously with the objective of trying to draw votes away from the government. Sibal, on the other hand, focused on demolishing the opposition's arguments and clarifying the fineprint of the policy.

Seeking to reassure members and win them over, Swaraj said that a defeat on the FDI vote would not bring down the government and claimed that it would only force a rollback of the decision. "Your fear that the government will fall because of this vote is unfounded," she said.

The mainstay of Swaraj's 90-minute offensive though was underlining that FDI in retail had failed in Western economies and that retail giants such as Walmart had finished the small retailer everywhere through predatory pricing. "Hum aapko hara ke jeetna nahin chahte, hum aapko mana ke jeetna chahte hain (We don't want the rollback by defeating you. We want the rollback by convincing you)," she said.

Swaraj also said claims that farmers will benefit from the move were "baseless" and that farmers in the European Union had been forced to sell their produce below production cost to large retail chains. "A fool learns from his own experience, while a wise man learns from the experience of others," she said. Even President Barack Obama was now supporting the small retailer with the "small business Saturday" campaign in the US, she added.

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