Why I do not favour FDI in retail.

If you expect FDI in retail is going to benefit consumers, you are living in a fool's paradise. FDI in retail is just going to benefit the moneyed class who are going into this business. People who are already in this business, people like Adi Godrej, Sunil Mittal and others.

I’ll tell you why.

In our area we have a big Reliance Fresh Mall, a JK Lifestore and a New Bachhu store which is a Mommy-papa store. There are at least another 50 or so Mummy-Papa stores in our locality.

This morning, I went to buy Oats which I normally buy from Reliance.

Reliance sells three brands of Oats. Quakers, Kellogg’s and Bagarrys. Up to last month I used to find competition between them and their prices used to vary. Today, I found that they had the same MRP of RS 129/-. I asked Reliance whether there was any discount. They denied any discount. I did not buy and went to JK Lifestore. I will be complaining to the Competition Commission of India regarding the above Cartel formed by these three companies.

At JK, I found that they had only one brand, Quakers which too had a MRP of Rs 129/- but they gave a discount of 3% which brought my price down to Rs 125/-. I bought it and also 50 gm packet of Nescafe with a marked MRP of RS 98/-. Here too I got a 3% discount which brought my price down to Rs 95/-. Reliance would not have given this discount. Then, although, I did not require another packet of oats, I went to New Bachhu Store to find out their price. When they mentioned the price as Rs 125/- I bought one packet from them also.

The above just shows that the Central government is just hoodwinking the people when it says FDI will benefit the consumers and farmers. It will benefit none of these. It will benefit only the multinationals and make lakhs of small household businesses lose their source of income and generate unemployment instead of creating employment.