FDI in retail sector to create 10 million jobs in 10 years: Repor

The report that FDI in retail will lead to the creation of 10 million jobs is not practicable.hat is, if FDI in retail is allowed, a lot of organised players will be coming in, which would lead to increase in employment opportunities in the retail sector and associated sectors such as sourcing and logistics. This can at best be construed as wishful thinking of the over enthusiastic leaders in the government and votaries of FDI in retail trading. Now, the question is, if Wall-Mart, Tesco and similar companies can create millions of jobs, why not domestic companies in retail sector do the same thing? Why not the government encourages the domestic companies to create more jobs? It is true that a few thousands of literate/educated youth will get job in retail chains and get attractive salary too. Most of those jobs will be generated at the front-end, in positions such as sales associates, cashiers, customer services staff, security guards, in-store security personnel, IT and systems for retail staff, customer relationship associates, loaders/ unloaders, merchandise refilling staff, department managers, store managers and regional and national managers. Some of the new jobs will be in warehousing and logistics-related areas. The rest will come in manufacturing services such as per-processing and processing. But what is the guarantee that the displaced persons belonging to the unorganised retail sector will find employment in the multinational retail outlets. A few corporate brokers will also get opportunity to earn considerable amount of brokerage. Coming to reality, the creation of 10 million jobs is unachievable even in the long-run, leave alone in just three years, as against the contention of Mr. Anand Sharma, the Union Commerce and Industry Minister, who failed to elucidate the ways and means of creating such a large number of jobs, say in millions, by the multinational retail giants. Various studies on the impact of global retail giants setting up retail stores confirm that job losses have occurred everywhere and as a result disrupted the livelihood of the people. The study by David Neumark of the University of California and his colleagues in 2007 revealed that for every job created by Big Box retail, 1.4 jobs are lost from smaller retail stores in the neighbourhood. Another study by Emek Basker of Missouri University in 2005 concluded that up to 60 jobs might be lost in 5-6 analysing US counties with an average population of 78,000 (during 1977-1998). Another study on opening of retail shops by the global giants in Jakarta (the capital city of Indonesia, found that 2 jobs were lost in the unorganised retail sector for every one job created by the Big Box retail). According to the Madras Kirana Merchants' Association: “It (FDI in retail) is an act not desirable for any country to create a situation in which a few retail giants monopolize the major portion of retail trade, This is particularly applicable to India .

 Dr.C.Murukadas , The Times of India, Sep.26,2012