Walmart Invades India - Who’s Next?

>India’s rapidly growing middle class
>estimated at 1.1 billion

India’s total population is 1.1 billion.

India’s “middle class” is around 25% of total population while the rest of the country wallows total poverty.

That is my mistake, as I paraphrased that from the press release. I guess we both got carried away, sorry. India’s poluation is 1.124 million and 24% live below the poverty line. India’s middle class now approaches the population of the US at about 250 million + people. Time Asia 2004 http://www.time.com/time/asia/covers/501041206/two_indias_vpt_das.html

The Wal-Mart, Bharti Enterprises tie up has been a hotly debated subject from day one. The Left (communist) parties do not like it, the retailer associations do not want Wal-Mart as their competition, some large domestic retail firms also do not want to be compete with Wal-Mart while the Indian retail industry is still at such as nascent stage, but there are several advantages too.

Wal-Mart will be taking care of the back end issues such as logistics, supply chain management etc, all areas that local retail chains are not that great at yet. Bharti will be the face of the stores to probably downplay the hatred that so many people have for Wal-Mart.

One of the main reasons to keep out foreign retailers has been to safeguard the 12 million local mom-and-pop stores (known as kirana stores) but with domestic retailers like Reliance Retail, Subhiksha and Food Bazaar setting up operations across the country in a similar manner to Wal-Mart or Tesco or Carrefour, why stop only the foreign retailers.

It’s time for a change in the Indian retail industry, whether that change is brought by Wal-Mart or Tesco or Metro or Carrefour.

Thanks so much for the intuitive comment! I would love to see an Indian companies or companies get a foothold on this market. Walmart will do what is necessary to make things look good, but in the end will trash the market for a quarter and leave the nice mom and pop entities to work at the local fast food dive.
I just hate to see the US export all the really bad stuff we have some up with to places where the culture and infrastructure could be properly integrated into business plans.

Please note: Over the next few days I will be adding comments to this post from some of the most intuitive and knowledgeable experts at a community called Linkein. I posed a question to these experts that basically directed them here in order to make their comments.
I hope you all find the results interesting and enlightening. The purpose is for all of us to gain some insight into what we really feel or should be feeling about the events that shape the world. Web 2.0 is about shaping the web and the web is helping to shape the world.

A series of answers will be posted to illustrate the views of professionals in my network at Linkedin.com. The comments were in response to the question to a question about our employement opportunities will be in 2015. The question there pointed to the post here. I will post the answers one at a time.  

Howard Halpern, MA (Psych), CPRW, Member OACCPPCertified Professional Resume Writer, Technical Writer, Web Developer & SEO TechnicianThere are many dangers. The worst is coming to a conclusion without looking at all relevant factors. In other words, what I am saying is that WalMart may be dangerous. But far more dangerous is the human mind that looks at only one aspect of an extremely complex situation. Offshoring raises several relevant questions: are individuals responsible for their behavior? If so, why do people in third-world countries choose to work for North American (please note that I am Canadian) companies? Are they in need of psychiatric attention, or do they actually perceive benefit? If so, what benefit? Do they need to become better educated, so that they make wiser decisions? If so, how do they acquire the education needed to act in their own self-interest? Does offshoring actually create jobs in the US by increasing foreign demand for NorthAmerican products? Does it stimulate creativity by challenging North Americans to come up with better ways of doing things and thereby compete more effectively with the multinationals? I am not sufficiently knowledgeable in the field to say whether offshoring is, in general, good or bad. But I can say this: it is extremely often that I hear commentary that reflects one leg of the four-legged elephant. It is extremely rare, if ever, that I hear commentary acknowledging the existence of all four legs.

 Sheilah Etheridge  [LION] Owner, SME Management   I have to agree with Howard and Michael that the arable land is not at issue, and yes we would still have plenty of food to feed the masses. However……… The U.S. Businesses and the Government has exploited the workers in other countries and harmed workers in the U.S. Now the table is turning and the people who were being exploited are raising their prices to do the work. I certainly cannot blame anyone for doing so. I’m not against globalization as a whole. Perhaps a smaller percentage is good for everyone. What I am against is the exploitation of humans in other countries, and the harm to those here who lost a job. I do not feel the people in third world countries who took these jobs are to blame for any of what has transpired. If it were me, I would do the same thing. When you have no job and no way to provide for your family you take whatever is offered. The big businesses snapped up the opportunity to take advantage of the lower costs and didn’t give a second thought to the people here whose livelihood they just destroyed. Over the course of the last few years due to its rapid growth; outsourcing is not always the cheapest route to take anymore. Costs have risen for the work itself, and the costs to bring the work back home are prohibitive. These companies have essentially shot themselves in the foot and the consumer along with it. But they don’t feel the pain because they pass it onto us. What began as a cost effective method of production has now spread to every facet of business. Has it accomplished what was promised? Are prices lower? Sure they are. But it doesn’t matter if the price to the consumer is cheaper, if they don’t have a job they still can’t afford to buy it. Their job and their ability to buy were outsourced. Isn’t it amazing how these large power sources continue to go untouched? First they exploit the people of another country by paying a mere fraction of their worth. Now that the laborers are charging more, the companies are passing on the increase in costs to the consumer either through in higher prices and /or lower quality. The company sets the quality standard, not the people doing the work. I believe it is our duty to help others, but not at the expense of our own. I see nothing wrong with providing to those who need help. We certainly have more than we need. But I am of the belief that we should take care of home first. It isn’t just the Wal-Marts of the world. Our own President seems to prefer spending our tax dollars on everyone else too. Forget the folks back home, his only concern is how he can stick his nose in someone else’s business and spend as much as possible doing it. In the mean time the children and elderly are always the first and hardest hit. No one should be faulted for taking a job to support their family, whether they are here in America or in a third world country. There’s not one of us who work for a living that would say, hey it’s ok if my family starves and lives on the street, so why don’t you take the job. There is more wealth today than in years past, considerably more. But it sure as hell hasn’t wiped out poverty. We have children right here in the great U.S.A. dying from starvation. We have more people homeless than ever before. And NO it is not because they are lazy. I see more lazy people holding jobs than I do living on the street.Americans on the whole are a very smug society. I see an awful lot of people a bit too quick to blame the third world countries for taking our jobs away. But it wasn’t them. It was the large companies who hold the power and our very own government giving our jobs away. So where will we be in 2015? We will most likely be on the receiving end of outsourcing. The other countries will be so overwhelmed doing our work, that we in turn will be doing theirs.

Chris Travers-Owner, Metatron Techology Consulting and Computer Software Consultant       First, I want to agree that the ideas of current globalism are a mixed bag for everyone. However, I am in general all for globalism of certain types of production. However, Walmart is a different story. They have become a bahemoth which seems to think itself above the law. As one anecdote, in my town, Walmart was issued building permits in violation of zoning regulations. Even after the court ruled that these were improper and void, the city then issued operating permits to Walmart. Because I think that the rule of law is important, I have no respect for Walmart anymore. Back to general job forcasts. I don't know. THe real threat is not off-shoring, but rather the fact that so many parts of the world still have rapidly growing populations. This means that even though wealth is being created faster than ever, there may still not be enough jobs to go around and this makes things very difficult. So I don't know.

Ray van den Bel Online strategist-Toplinked.com, manager / owner Open Networkers MovementJobs in the future will be more oriented towards individual communication skills than currently. Now (very roughly, it very much depends on the job) most people are using their specific skill for about 25% of their work, 55% is devoted toward internal procedure and administration and the rest towards communicaton (internal / external). That will change (with automation and web 2.0 and web 3.0) towards the specific skills and the communication competences…Information on that can be found through the hyperlinks in my profile.

Janet Gershen-SiegelBusiness Analyst/Data Analyst at Keane Inc.Seems to me that it's a way of generating a whole mess o' happy little consumers. Those who want to pay less without caring about how the workers are treated. Or where the goods come from. Or .. or .. or …. Seems also like a way of generating a whole mess o' credit card debt. It's a lovely cycle — low prices, consumer buys all sorts of junk they don't need because it's cheap or seems cheap, consumer goes over credit limit, consumer can't afford anything better, consumer buys there even more because it's cheap. And so it goes. These are people who may not be the world's most savvy consumers, and may be enamored of anything American and who might not be seeing much in the way of competition. But they really want consumer goods (totally understandable). It seems like tossing Wal-Marts in there means that a billion or so folks might fall into a credit trap. I'm not disparaging anyone's intelligence — please don't misunderstand me — and there are plenty of ways to pass American culture around the world, but Wal-Mart seems like such a weasely and disingenuous way of doing it.

Richard Harrison Software and Datastructures Guru         Socio-economic breeding of an entire nation/culture of additional consumers seems well-considered profit-wise. "Flattening" is good - complex in many respects, but good. Competitive aspect don't frighten me.

There it is. Answers from some of the most intelligent and insightful professionals I have ever met. So, what does this say about where and what we will be doing in 2015? What on Earth does arable land have to do with this?
The map above is a trick map for one thing. It shows the available arable land based on population density. It is not a good representation of how much we actually can use, nor does it reflect the quality of land in current use to feed the world.
If this post were a test, the highest grade the smartest people I know would have achieved might have been a 70. Granted, I did not specifically ask what land use and Walmart growth had in common. But a big damn map right before some questions about our future says something about what the author thinks our employment opportunities might be. It also begs the question: “Is global expansion of this nature a good thing given the state of the planet?”
I respect these people deeply, and would never suppose to even be close to their expertise in any field, except perhaps geography. If I cannot convince them that screwing up the world is not something to stop the presses over, then there is little hope that more stressed and less professional people will ever believe or do anything about it.
So, we shall see where the discourse goes in another post.