Organised Vs Unorganised

Going by Census 2001, nearly 3 crores of people work in wholesale and retail trade in the country – 1.1 crores in the urban and 1.9 crores in the rural areas. Any protest by this sector “will cause companies such as Reliance, Pantaloon, Spencer, Bharti and now the Birlas to stand up and listen.
Organised retail has not penetrated and will not penetrate rural India for obvious reasons – it is just unviable. It is only the urban areas that organised retail is slowly but not steadily growing in.
Those belonging to the upper middle income group and higher income group and living in cities have been increasingly patronising organised trade thanks to the latter’s proliferation. That way speaking, they have traditionally stayed away from the mom-and-pop stores as far as possible.
Who patronises the outlets of organised retail in urban India? Definitely not the lower stratum of society; this stratum represents people who are either daily-wagers or who work for the unorganised trade and industry; their employment is seasonal which means they may remain jobless during the off-season. At sunset, they receive their wages with which they buy their rice or atta for the austere supper ahead. Their purchases are meagre and only the mom-and-pop stores will entertain them. Organised retail will not vend 50 ml of edible oil or 250 gm of rice or atta to such humble consumers.
Those belonging to the lower end of the middle – income group are generally employees of State / Central governments and the organised private sector.
They buy from the mom-and-pop stores on credit during the month and settle the bill when they receive their salaries in the first week of the succeeding month. At best, the lower end of the middle-income group may patronise organised retail for purchase of vegetables because the vegetable vendor does not provide credit anyway.
The truth therefore is that unorganised trade has not been affected to the extent it is made out. The statement of Mr Praveen Khandelwal, General Secretary, Confederation of All India Traders that “united we stand, divided we fall” is at best a diversionary tactic. Instead he had better prevail on his fellow-members to equip themselves better to take the competition head-on by being transparent in their dealings, by being quality-conscious and by being price-conscious, amongst other things.