Walmart Invades India – Who’s Next?

Rollback prices! Maybe we rolled too far!

Mobile phone firm Bharti Enterprises is aiming to start a chain of retail stores in India with US based Wal-Mart, and is reported to be prepared to invest $2.5 Billion dollars by 2015. Bharti Enterprises owns India's largest private phone firm and intends to open stores in cities with a population of more than one million. India's rapidly growing middle class estimated at 1.1 billion spends $300 billion dollars on retail shopping, according to estimates. This figure is expected to double by the year 2015 according to PriceWaterhouseCoopers. India does not allow foreign investment except for single brand stores like Nokia and Nike. Bharti intends to manage the front end retail business, while Walmart would be in logistics and supply, hiring an estimated 60,000 new employees.

I have been telling you guys, no one is listening!  Housewife Hell (my endearing term for Wal-Mart) is proliferating every aspect of life on this planet, that was their goal from the beginning. Sounds crazy, doesn't it? I mean they are only giving people what they want right? Could it be the other way around though? Slow down for just a second! Think of what you would do if you wanted to perpetuate the growth of wealth for a select few? How would you accomplish this if you had virtually unlimited resources? We are not just talking about Wal-Mart here either, for whoever controls technology controls period.

With that thought in mind, examine what has been happening since say the year 2000. The migration of manufacturing and even some service industry and technical jobs has been to places like China and India. I don't think anyone can really argue with this, as companies finally got free reign (especially here in the United States) to just do what they wanted in regard to “saving a buck” supposedly to give you value. Do the Chinese and Indian people just represent cheap labor? What other capacity do these people have by numbers alone?

They represent 3 billion consumers! Let's take my little World 2.0 conspiracy theory a little further, if you will bear with me. Take a look at the map of your world below.

What do you notice in this map of arable land resources on our little globe? The green areas represent land suitable for farming over .5 hectares (about 1.25 acres) per person within each country. Areas where the ratio is less than .1 hectares (or about .25 acres) per person digressing to red or the least land per person. Orange, or India and China in this case are at the brink of critical mass in their ability to sustain themselves. As Wal-Mart poises to take advantage of about 1 billion new middle class people in India (just a while back they were proud to display the “made in the USA” sign), what does the rest of the world think this loyal icon of the good old USA has in store for them? What does the map tell you about the future employment opportunities in your country, given that everyone wants cheap labor next to a huge consumer base?

I have some potential answers for you that proved to be too lengthly for this post. I will follow up after a few respond with their thoughts. Think about business and technology, and think about your place in it. Are you a consumer, producer, supporting industry or what do you think your role is in the big World 2.0 picture? It is the responsibility of Web 2.0 to think on such topics is it not?