Death of small businesses in Bengal and India: a comprehensive study of retail monopoly
January 23, 2009
By Siddhartha Mitra and Debarshi Das, Sanhati. Translated from a FAMA study
Click here for Bengali documentary on this material, produced by Canvas
1. Introduction: the old versus the new market: the politics of change
2. The attempt to control small businesses
3. How the attack on small businesses has already impacted the rest of the world
4. What is the current situation of small scale retail in India
5. How this is all going to change
6. The death of small businesses and the false promise of new employment
7. Farmer suicides
8. Procuring the crops – the farmers are left out
9. Impact on the environment
10. That is why there is Nandigram, Khammam, Posco
11. Let us walk together
************
1. Introduction: the old versus the new market: the politics of change
On the one hand, there is the dazzle of neon lights, while on the other, there is pitch darkness.
Light shines on the face of the new India. Advertisements display well-groomed people, with a new look, wearing the newest shoes, and sporting trendy shirts and cell phones. This image is an island in a sea of squalor and darkness, symbolic of today’s India, which the media hypes as the new rising economic power. Like a head that is growing at a much faster pace while the body falls far behind, there is a large portion of the country which is being left out of the process of “development”. This body is comprised of millions of hungry, dispossessed, displaced people, the new outcasts, on whose life no light shines.
It is comprised of small traders who have lost their livelihoods, farmers who have become landless; they are like an infestation of beetles, or like piles of garbage that accumulates in the fringes of large cities in India; refuse that needs to be cleansed, annoyances that need to be exterminated. The preparation for such cleaning is afoot throughout Bengal and the rest of the country, under the slogan of “development”.
The outcasts are accumulating. Accumulating like piles of trash that collects in the corners of large cities. Not only in Kolkata – they are pilling up in villages, and the remote parts of the state. They are the people who have been thrown out from factories, the small merchants who have lost their only livelihood. This crowd is being displaced by the tumultuous flow of capital, of unbridled development. Investment flow is shattering the old system; there is no place for them in the new system.
The tide of development is restructuring the entire country. Shattering the old system, it is leaving a bloody trail of destruction in Bengal and in many other states. Large corporations do not wish to leave any aspect of society alone any more. Not satisfied with the introduction of fertilizers and pesticides, and with the control of the technology, corporations now want to restructure the entire agricultural system, wanting to swallow fertile lands in industrial zones, and convert the remaining land into production sites for goods to feed the expanding consumer market. Active in this are large corporations, who are now eyeing the large market that India is providing, and all of India’s vast resources.
Multinationals, in collusion with the government have already started their attacks on the farmers of rural India; we have already seen the ugly face of this in Singur and in Nandigram. Now the big bourgeoisie is digging its claws into small businesses. From production to distribution, they want to take control of retail sector of economy. This has struck terror in the hearts of small businessmen across India. If large corporations take over this sector, where will they go? This is why the resistance to the corporations is becoming stronger and more unified. The attack on retail trade by large capital must be stopped.
For bringing all the different movements in the state together, there was a public meeting that was convened in the Kolkata Tripura Welfare Auditorium on 15th January 2008. The Resistance Forum against Monopoly Aggression was formed. Since then, different discussions and meetings have progressed and solidified this movement. The mass gathering on 26th of July, 2008 has taken it further ahead and has consolidated it.
On the 14th of June, on the invitation of the preparation committee, there was a large gathering in the basement of the Institute Hall of the University of Calcutta. Many people came to the meeting, braving the rains and wading through knee-deep water. They had opened small shops using their all – the retirement funds of their parents, the last bit of jewelry of their wives, and from personal loans. Some used to take daily loans from local mahajans at usurious interest rates to sell vegetables in the local market to eke out a living. There were workers of a shutdown factory who sell garments on some busy footpaths. Some had tiny shops at a nondescript corner of the market. These are no longer there. These people are an evicted, driven-out lot now. Their markets were razed to the ground to make way for shopping malls where they did not find a place. The administration has proved to be a liar after it had promised them an alternative livelihood.
Monopoly capital wants to control production, transportation and supply with the help of a very few people. As a result, petty producers, van drivers, rickshaw drivers, porters would face a severe danger after they have lost jobs. On the other hand, monopoly capital would ensnare the peasants of the country through contracts in high-technology farming. This can only be compared to the cruel fate of the indigo farmers of colonial India. In the last twenty years four lakh peasants have committed suicide in this country courtesy the new economic policy. None will escape the extremely exorbitant prices for the produce which the monopoly capital would charge after they take the complete control of the economy.
2. The attempt to control small businesses
Global capitalism is facing crises in the phase of imperialism. Unable to withstand the crisis that it faces today, capitalism, and the powerful financial system that supports it, is attempting to avoid a collapse by reinventing itself in the guise of globalization. Globalization is an affliction that now threatens every aspect of society. The seeds of this were sown in the developed countries during the financial crisis of the 1970’s. Now, the malaise threatens to afflict developing countries. A manifestation of this is the attempt by the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its financial arm, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to push for structural adjustments in the developing countries, and thus establish control over them.
Privatization of the access to natural resources and services that are provided by the government is another way capitalism is attempting to establish control. Till recently, healthcare, education, water and energy supplies had been the responsibilities of the government. Now there is an effort to privatize even these basic amenities. Even the agricultural sector is not exempt. The multinationals that are active in India are involved in two major initiatives: they want to take control of the production machinery of the country, and they would like to increase the consumption of the goods that this machinery churns out. Special Economic Zones or SEZ’s, which are coming up in different parts of the country are in essence these production zones for consumer goods. These SEZ’s, which exploit the available natural resources, are coming up in arable areas, resulting in the displacement of farmers and indigenous people.
Small scale retail businesses are also not exempt from this push towards privatization. The turnover of such businesses of the entire world is around 315 crore lakh rupees (around 7.88 trillion dollars). To try to capture this huge market, the foreign trade conglomerations like the Foreign Trade Association (FTA) and the European Services Forum (ESF) are attempting to strike a deal with the World Trade Organization (WTO) for special agreements only for small businesses. These agreements are targeted towards creating more opportunities for foreign investments, making them secure, and making certain that national governments will give them same status as granted to local businesses. In addition to the efforts of large multinationals, national organizations like FICCI, Assocham, are in support, claiming that such efforts would help the economy by aiding both the buyers and the producers of goods.
Just as one important aim of globalization is to sell off the land and water of India, similarly there is a great push to increase consumption. There are two major goals of taking over the retail businesses – firstly, expansion of the businesses of large corporations and maximization of their profits, and secondly the control of the entire production machinery of the country. As a result, the entire nation is in peril.
3. How the attack on small businesses has already impacted the rest of the world
London, Latin America, and Thailand have already faced the consequences of the attack on small businesses. The expansion of supermarkets has resulted in the closure of several hundred thousand grocery stores in London and the UK. The effects of globalization in Latin America have been even more striking. In this region, 70-80% of the small businesses have been affected by the inroads made by large foreign conglomerates. In ten years following 1984, 30% of small businesses have shut down in Argentina. Between 1991 and 1995, 20% of small shops have shut down in Chile. In only one year (2002-2003), over a 154,000 stores have shut down in Indonesia. Countries like Thailand, Malaysia have been forced to declare strict regulations to control the amount of foreign investment. Large corporations like Tessco, Royal Ahold and Cafu started to enter the small business sector in Thailand after 1980. Once these corporations established a foothold in the country, they tried to achieve complete monopoly. In only five years these multinationals took over 15% of the market share. Responding to nationwide public protests, the Thai government passed regulatory laws in 2002, but was forced to retract them afterwards under pressure from the WTO. By 2000, Walmart had taken over 45.6% of the small business market in Mexico. Even in China, where the state controls supermarket chains, 80% of the ownership of the top 15 chains has been handed over to foreign investors.
4. What is the current situation of small scale retail in India
India has the highest density of small stores in the world, with around 40 small shops per thousand people. The size of the economy of small businesses in India is around 12 lakh crore rupees (300 billion dollars). This is projected to expand to 25.5 lakh crore rupees (637 billion dollars), with the rise of the middle class. The small business sector currently provides employment to the highest number of people in India after agriculture, and is responsible for generating 14% of the national GDP. In all, there are around 4 crore (40 million) stores, with around 10 crore (100 million) people directly involved, and 20-30 crore (200-300 million) people involved if indirect associations are taken into account.
West Bengal ranks third among states the country in the number of small retail shops. There are between 30 and 45 lakh (3-4.5 million) small shops in the state, (the higher figure is from the business organization FTO). Around 4 people earn their livelihoods from each shop. An estimated 2 crore (20 million) people directly dependent on these stores for their livelihoods. As was mentioned earlier, this number is much larger if people who are both directly and indirectly dependent in this sector can be taken into consideration.
As only 2% of this industry is organized, the remaining 98% of the stores fall in the unorganized retail sector. In general, these shops occupy less than 500 sq ft area, and in many cases they occupy only around 20 – 25 sq ft., even lesser at times. These shops have and have taken root in places like a room in people’s houses, small jhopris, sometimes even on the footpath. Some of these provide very little in return on investment. On the lower end, the retail businesses essentially consist of street hawkers peddlers, many of whom operate out of mobile thelas or travel in trams and buses hawking their goods. There are around 5 lakh street hawkers in Kolkata alone. On the more profitable end, there are the small pharmaceutical stores. There are around 60,000 small pharmaceutical stores in the state, out of 800,000 such stores in India.
There are several layers of people between the producer and the seller in the small business sector. There is the travelling salesperson who takes the wares to the different stores from the producer. There are people who are salesmen to the stores, and those who are involved in storage, goods supply, and transportation. Many of these people transport the goods to and from the warehouses and production sites using small vans or rickshaws. In this way, a complex network of people who are associated with a single shop. There is no qualifying requirement to become a part of this network. A vast majority of the people involved in this area have little or no education or training. Many have joined out of necessity; they include seasonal agricultural workers, factory workers who have lost their jobs, people who could not otherwise find any employment. Many who have embraced this option as it was the only one left to them.
5. How this is all going to change
The large conglomerates are opening hypermarkets that are going to be many times larger than the individual shops of the currently operating small businesses. Instead of having around 40 shops per thousand people, there would be around 1-5 hypermarkets that will provide the service to the same number of people. In the next five years, the net investment by the multinationals in the retail sector in India will be around 2.2 lakh crore Rs (55 billion dollars.) most of which will be for the jewelry and food. By 2010, it is estimated that organized stores will control around 20% of this sector, up from the current level of 2%.
Large Indian corporate houses are forming alliances with foreign corporations in this expansion. Reliance has formed a partnership with Dow Chemicals. ITC has entered into a joint partnership with Coca Cola, Mitsubishi, AbuDhabi Flour Mill, and Lee and Gap have joined hands with Arvind Mills or Vardamaan. Large corporations like Field Fresh and Mittal/Bharti have teamed up with Walmart and Tessco. They are particularly interested in the food market, with the corporation Field Fresh leasing 4600 acres for cultivation under contract farming meant to produce food to be sold in their stores.
Walmart has an annual turnover economically comparable to that of the 20th largest country in the world. Walmart is already exporting goods from India to the tune of around 1.2 billion dollars per year, after manufacturing them at low cost. They have more than 40 suppliers for consumer products like fans, towels, jewelry, and food items like basmati rice, vegetables and fruits. To make inroads into the food market, they have formed alliances with large corporations like Field Fresh, which has also partnered up with another retail giant, Tessco. Field Fresh, in turn, has leased 4600 acres for cultivation under contract farming.
The Reliance group is entering the small business sector modeling itself along the lines of Walmart. Just in the food business it has plans to invest around 24 thousand crore Rs (around 6 billion dollars). This group has already opened 430 Reliance Fresh stores, and they plan to open around 1500 by 2011. The Future Group, which is a part of the Reliance Group, has plans to open 51 Pantaloon hyper markets and 77 food bazaars. They have already opened around 100 Big Bazaars. By 2010, their retail outlets will occupy an area of 3 crore sq ft.
Other large Indian multinationals are also expanding into the retail sector in a big way. The corporate group AV Birla has opened 299 hyperstores, and is planning to open 300 more in the current year. The RPG group has opened 350 Spencer stores in 55 cities, and is planning on opening 500 stores in 65 cities in the current year. They have opened 200 music stores under the banner of Music World. Bharti, in partnership with Walmart, is planning to open 100 hyper markets, with an investment of 28 thousand crore Rs (7 billion dollars). The Tata group has also entered this area with the retail chains Westside, Landmark and the Star India Bazaar. At the same time, smaller Indian retail organizations are being swallowed up by these retail giants. To site some examples, the Maratha Co-op store, Sangam direct, Sabka Bazaar of Delhi have been taken over by Wadhen Retail group.
Villages have not been spared in this assault on small businesses. The monopolistic corporations are trying their best to take control of the small businesses in the rural areas worth 1.4 lakh crore Rs (34 billion dollars). Already groups like Tata Kishan Sansar, Godrej Adhar, ITC Chaupal are active in the villages to take control of small businesses in those places. Starting from fries to vegetables, fruits, seeds – everything that is sold in small shops is present in these markets. ITC is planning to invest 5000 crore rupees to try to get the 1 lakh villages into their network. The Future Group is planning to open K Big stores in the throughout the countryside in India.
There is a great effort in trying to take control over the small medicine stores. Apollo, Medicine Shop, Dial for Health, 98.4 Pill and Powder are some large corporations that have become active in this area. The multinational First Health World has entered this arena keeping the D.C Sriram group as a front. These medical superstores plan to cater to all aspects of medical care like pathology tests, medication disbursement, and telemedicine, and thus take full control of this sector.
Despite the fact that it is not legally allowed yet, the government is doing little to prevent multinational in entering the area of small businesses. There are loopholes which the various multinationals explore for their ventures in this regard. Corporations, like the Amway group, which sell directly instead of storing products in warehouses, are already exploring such loopholes. Foreign manufacturing firms have already received the permission of investing 51% in their own stores in this country if the products are being sold in their own stores abroad. As a result, there is no protection for the small businesses in India.
6. The death of small businesses and the false promise of new employment
The takeover of small businesses by large conglomerates is going to have severe and far reaching effects. However, this might not be readily apparent. In his book “The world of change”, distinguished professor Ratan Khashnobish remarks that “the impact will not be very large at first, nor will it be apparent. In the beginning, the smaller shops next to the retail shops will be forced to shut down. Then one day, it would be noticed that the evening crowds in New Market have started to become thinner. Soon, people would see that the shops in the New Market are being sold off cheaply, and perhaps some day the whole market will be shut down. Society will not quite bother about the people who would be losing their jobs. How many would lose their sleep over the employees of the cinema theaters after INOX culture has taken over the town?”
Smaller businesses will not be able to remain competitive in the face of price competition by larger corporations. A survey in the Lower Pareil, Mumbai Central and Bhandup-Mutundu areas of Mumbai, carried out on 82 stores and 30 hawkers, has shown that around 50% businessmen were thinking of closing their stores. Only 14% of the hawkers were planning to expand their business efforts. A survey carried out in the stores around three Reliance Fresh outlets in Delhi have shown that sales have gone down in 88% of the stores, with 45% registering a greater than 50% loss of sales. 57% of these shops are thinking of closing down.
The effect will also be felt by the different layers of middlemen who are involved. It will affect the rickshaw pullers and the van drivers who transport the goods, the producers, the businessmen and the different travelling salesmen who are part of the intricate network of people involved in the small-scale retail industry. The new employment opportunities will be far fewer. Currently, in a normal 100 sq ft store, around 4 people, including the owner, are employed on an average. A hundred such stores provide livelihood to at least 300 people. However, only 25-30 people would be employed by a 10000 sq ft shopping mall. These malls also use self-help booths and security cameras, further reducing the number of people who could be otherwise employed. In addition, the people who will be employed by the larger stores will create an income disparity, as they will be receiving almost double the wages in addition to the many facilities provided by their employers.
It is to be noted that the small businessmen who are the service providers or sellers in their respective businesses are also the buyers from other small businesses. If they lose their livelihoods, they will also lose their purchasing power and not be able to function and buyers any more.
If the organized sector can take control of even 20% of the small business market, more than a crore people will lose their jobs, while only one lakh and eighty thousand people will find employment. However, the people who will find employment would not be from the same set of people who have lost their livelihoods. They would be from the more educated and sophisticated class of people, who would be holding diplomas and degrees from different management and other training institutions. The John’s, Lisa’s and Terri’s will take the place of mostly uneducated and unskilled Lalu’s, Shyam’s and Kalu’s who make the bulk of the small scale retail businesses today.
Shopping malls in different countries often employ smart young men, women and housewives. Following this pattern, Spencer, Big Bazaar is actively recruiting such people in India. Naturally, the jobs they will provide will be temporary, and most of these employees will be working on an hourly wage. A lot of skilled youngsters will be wasting their talents and creative energies in the cash counters of chains like Cash and Carry, Pantaloon, all to make money quickly. And their earnings would quite often go back to these chains towards the purchase of foreign made products like cell phones, branded clothing.
In these corporate organizations, it is often the case that labor laws are violated. The employees are often made to work beyond eight hours; such violations are illegal under the existing labor laws. Retailers like Walmart have long been known to exploit their workers by making them work in unhealthy environments. Walmart is also known to be responsible for the incidence child labor and harassing female workers in the factories where their goods are produced.
This is the new order. When a new technological center will take root, so will new night clubs, pubs, bars and American style food plazas around the center. New Inox theatres and shopping theatres will sprout up; the older shops and film theatres will disappear. A huge number of people will be left jobless, destitute and hungry.
Predatory pricing – even the buyer is not spared.
Once large corporations have shut down local small businesses using predatory pricing, they can easily increase their own prices and their customers will be forced to buy from them. For example, the multinational firm Lafarge Cement entered the construction market in this country by pricing their cement bags at 40-50 Rs each, which was much lower than the going market rate. Soon all the competing firms were forced to come to an understanding with Lafarge. Once the terms were established, the price of cement continued to rise, far beyond the fair price. The same phenomenon can be observed in the fruit markets of Bangalore, where the larger grocery stores have increased the prices of their fruits after ending the competition from different smaller vendors. Now the process of takeover of small scale retail using predatory pricing is threatening to engulf even the agricultural sector, as will be discussed.
7. Farmer suicides
The encroachments of large corporations like Monsanto, DuPont and Dow in the agricultural sector will affect the food security of a large segment of the country’s population. Just as at one time indigo plantations thrived in India, and how coffee plantations thrived in Brazil and rice in Egypt, the whole agricultural business of the country is now being reorganized.
India has around 11% of the arable land of the whole world, and produces the greatest variety of crops. India leads the world in the production of vegetables and fruits, and comes only third to US and China in food-grain productions. 41% of the world’s mangoes, 36% of its peas, 16% of its milk, 24% of the world’s cashew crop are grown in India. 11% of the cultivable land in the world is in India, and it can easily become one among the top meat producing nations of the world. There is also the rising populations of 20 crore (2 million) new buyers, who are waiting for the new consumer products to flood the market.
There is also the spread of genetically modified seeds. Some of these seeds are “terminated” seeds, which are able to provide a crop only once. This would make the farmer reliant on the multinationals who would be selling the seeds. At the same time, the farmer would need to use specific fertilizers and pesticides along with these seeds. In case of a crop failure, the farmer would be left destitute and bankrupt. The authorities in power are doing little to stop this onslaught, and instead are making it easier for this spread to take place. The governing Left Front government has accepted the recommendations of the McKinsey report, which supports such practices and thus will be very detrimental to the farmer’s interests in this regard.
Pepsico is being characterized as becoming the farm product hub for Asia. They will be exporting sea weeds, potatoes, chilli peppers, oranges, tomatoes. To meet the demands of their Tropicana brand, they are farming oranges in a large district of Punjab called Jalwal. They will be selling the seeds, training the farmers, buying the crop at a fixed price. Needless to mention, Pepsico is not entering into an agreement with the smaller farmers; they are making these agreements with some influential and rich local farmers, who are able to receive loans from foreign banks and financers. In some cases, the corporations are directly leasing the land for farming. Not only Pepsico, but corporations like Bharti, Metro Cash and Carry and even McDonalds entering into such partnerships.
There is a large support for contract farming. There is a feeling that as a result of this, the farmers will be receiving adequate compensation. Few realize that this would hardly be case. The farmers would lease out the lands, and the MNCs would lease in and would dictate the crops. The seeds, fertilizers and pesticides would also belong to the agents. The farmers in effect would become bonded labourers. If the crop fails, the farmers will have to default on their loans, and the situation will resemble Vidarbha, which has seen a great rate of farmer suicides.
8. Procuring the crops – the farmers are left out
An example of the impact of organized agriculture can be seen in the banana planters of the Phillipines. In 1981, according to a UN sponsored study, only 17% of the final sales price of the banana was received by the farmers. Procurement, marketing, packaging and transport took the lion’s share of the proceeds. The situation in agriculture is similar to industrial output in this regard. The weavers of Bangladesh receive around 1.7% of the sale price for their efforts, while their Bangladeshi owners receive around 1%.
The new procurement system will also adversely impact the existing procurement system. The actions of the corporate group ITC Chaupal are illustrative in this regard. Agricultural produce had been traditionally sold by the farmers to Mandalas. ITC Chaupal initially opened buying centers right next to the existing Mandalas, and offered higher prices for the crop farmers brought in. Each of these centers was equipped with computers and procurers who were present in the centers were able to determine what the crop inflow to the Mandi was, and how to set the prices that could undercut the current competition. In this manner, they purchased a large quantity of soya beans from the farmers in Madhya Pradesh in 2000. Lured by the lucrative price, farmers at that time stopped going to the Mandalas to sell their crop; these Mandalas were forced to shut down.
Eventually, ITC lowered their prices below the fair value of the crop. Now that they had captured the market, they forced the farmers to sell their soya crop at reduced prices, wrongfully sighting low quality or damp induced damage. But the farmers were not left with any choice. Unable to pay back their loans, many farmers chose to commit suicide. Over four and a half lakh farmers have chosen this path in Madhya Pradesh, Vidarbha, Karnataka and Punjab in the last two decades.
Already 50% of the vegetables and fruits that are being produced in India are being exported. 70 lakh acres of Indian agricultural land has come now under contract farming (as per 2006 statistics). These investments do not enhance the economy of the country. Most of the product that is being produced using the water, soil and labor of this country ends up being exported. This is resulting in a gradual de-industrialization of the country. Even in Bengal, where the ruling communist government is supposedly against the entry of large corporations in the small business sector, many multinationals are able to do precisely that. Metro Cash and Carry, which is one of the top 500 corporations of the world, have taken a large area in the bypass, and are buying much of the produce there. Instead of transported the produce that is grown there to NupurBabur Bazaar or KoleBazaar on small vans and rickshaws by the locals, the produce is being transported to the Metro cold storage locations in their company vans. This is similar to how the produce in rural areas has been monopolized by the new corporations.
Apart from taking control of the production system, the multinational corporations are forming alliances with other large Indian corporations which will take over more parts of the supply chain. While Monsanto is making an agreement with Mahaico in Maharashtra to take over the cotton farming sector, Arvind Mills or Mahaico are signing agreements with Gap to buy the cotton that will be produced for production of clothes and dresses most of which will be sold in the foreign market.
Since the goods have now to be sold to a smaller segment of the population as the rest lack any buying power, it becomes imperative that all possible buyers are inculcated with consumerism. Thus even poorer people, who are at the fringes of this population, become targets. The Lays packet that sells for 5 Rs has little content, and more packaging. It symbolizes how even this product has been sold to the poorest and has taken control of that sector.
9. Impact on the environment
The current small markets and bazaars in Bengal have many problems, like poor waste management, sanitation facilities. They are dirty, crowded, and often have poor facilities for sanitation. But little is being done by the authorities to try to improve the facilities at these places. This also attracts the shoppers into the shining new malls and large supermarkets that sell groceries. However, not much has been done to analyze the environmental impact of storing food in a large scale. Such storage systems require large amounts of chemical preservatives and pesticides, which poison the environment. The extra packaging the food products now needed would add to the environmental pollution. Also, much energy will be required to store and display the perishable food items, which will have add to the increasing problem of climate change.
10. That is why there is Nandigram, Khammam, Posco
What started ten years ago as a displacement of jhupri and bastee dwellers has now taken the full form of displacement of common people in Singur, Nandigram, Gurgaon, Kalinganagar. However, the people who have long been oppressed are fighting back in any way they can.
Take the example of Barrackpore. This is hardly 24 km from Kolkata. In the east of the train station, there was not so long ago the Nonachondon lake market. This market had been established by refugees fleeing from erstwhile East Pakistan, who were desperate to set up a way to earn their livelihoods. The market had expanded, and had become established as an important place. However, five years ago, the Barrackpore municipality had decided to demolish the bazaar and establish a thirteen storied business center in its place. After consulting with the local businessmen, the ex-municipality chairman decided to rehabilitate the market in the first floor. It was decided that the construction would take place in three phases, and it would not be necessary to create a temporary venue for the market. The shop owners could open their stores at little or no cost in this place. However, the new municipality chairman refused to abide by the agreement. So the Bazaar Bachao Committee decided to take the matter to court, and a stay order was passed putting the construction on hold.
29th December, 2006. In broad daylight, a large army of strongmen, with the help of a bulldozer, demolished the market, right in front of the police. The locals were helpless on that day, and the paper of the stay order was useless in the face of the onslaught. Today, the three thousand people who were affected on that day are somehow eking out an existence in dire poverty, starvation and hunger. Eleven of them have already lost their lives in this misery. Many more are just counting their days, waiting to die. Not only in Barrackpore, there are other instances where promises have been broken by the government. Shops have similarly been demolished and new business centers are coming up on their ruins. South City for instance was built on factory land.
There has been some opposition to such attacks. In several places, agitations have occurred in opposition to the opening of the Reliance Fresh stores. In Park Circus, the shopkeepers have formed a “Park Circus Bazaar Bachao Committee”. They have carried out different protests against the handover of the Park Circus shopping complex to large businesses. Similar protests have also been organized in Gariahat against the Spencer group and in Bidhannagar BD Block. The attempt by Reliance to open a shopping mall in Sreerampur was blocked by local businessmen. A proposed shopping mall by the Birla’s in Rishra’s G.T Road is being opposed by the local business men. In Chuchura, a token one day bandh was organized by the small medicine shop owners. In Sodhpur, Panihati a movement has been active for the past year against the inroads of large corporations. Not only local businessmen, local people have also been involved in this movement. In the Ghola region of Sodhpur a protest movement started against the opening of a Reliance Fresh store. Finally, there was a blockade of a road and the protestors hung a lock on the designated store. In this very area, in Amaravati, ‘More’ of the Aditya Birla’s was shut down by the protest movement of the small businessmen. However, this movement has now been undermined by the subterfuge carried out by the ruling party and the municipality members. In Bolpur, the local people are determined to shut stop on the spread of mall culture.
11. Let us walk together
The protests so far have been fragmented in nature. Most people have not quite realized the danger they are in. Most of the people who are involved in the protests are small businessmen, but there is not any general protest movement. In many places, where the damage has been already done, the affected people have been undermined by excessive dependence on the ruling parties. The middle class is still suffering from the delusion of “progress”. The producers are confused by the corporate media and government promises. But soon, many more people apart from the small businesspeople will be affected. That is why this fight is not only against the spread of corporate retail businesses; it is a fight against to save the indigenous agricultural methods, the indigenous culture, the local economy and society.
It is true that an agriculture based economy is not the ultimate or optimal solution. There is massive corruption in the existing system, because of the presence of many middlemen, who deprive the farmers of most of their rightful earnings. Artificial shortages are also created by these middlemen. Poor transport and storage facilities cause massive food losses. The poor conditions in the markets had already been discussed earlier. The government should take steps to strengthen the small businesses and thus save the livelihoods of many millions of people. However, the government is not taking any initiative in this regard. Perhaps they would like the system of small businesses to collapse, so that the entrance of large corporations can be justified. As a result, the weakening of the local economy would make it easy for the handover of local resources to the foreign corporations.
The fight against globalization is being carried out in many different countries and in different parts of India. Singur, Nandigram, Posco, Kalinganagar are but some manifestations of these struggles. The fight to protect small businesses needs to integrate with these movements. Monopolistic businesses are but the other face of the aggression of globalization, which is what these movements are standing up against. Only when the different protest movements unite, would there be any chance of success.
