Taking serious objection to the US retail giant Walmart purchasing 77 per cent stake in Indian e-tailer Flipkart, the ‘Swadeshi Jagran Manch’ (SJM) — an RSS outfit — on Wednesday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to ensure that the interests of ‘small Kirana shops’ at the bottom of retail pyramid be safeguarded.
“Walmart is the world’s largest importer of Chinese goods, they will continue to pump in these products, killing out small and medium enterprises further and kill our Make in India dream too,” said SJM convener Ashwini Mahajan in a letter to the Prime Minister.
“We all know that they have interests in the multi-brand and retail food and combination of both will kill the interests of farmers,” said Mahajan in his communication after news broke out about the Walmat-Flipkart deal.
The SJM, which is opposing the sell-off of public entity Air India, also took on Niti Ayog CEO Amitabh Kant with a tweet saying, "@Amitabhk87ji what are you doing in @NITIAayog favouring and facilitating illegal, anti-farmer, anti-entrepreneur, anti-people , anti exchequer Flipkart Walmart deal @ Rajiv Kumar1& narendra modi@AmitShah@arunjaitley.”
Kant has been quoted by a news channel that “while Government is at arms’ length in deals like Walmart and Flipkart but the Government will act as facilitators for the ecommerce industry”.
Mahajan told The Pioneer that he has spoken to Union Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu who told him that he had asked his officials to ascertain all facts of the deal.
At present, 100 per cent FDI is allowed in single brand while in multi-brand it is allowed upto 51 per cent.
The SJM leader said the Government should not have dismantled FIPB (Foreign Investment Promotion Board) which he said provided “a barrier”.
Mahajan said Walmart has made a backdoor entry via Flipkart “barging into the Indian market” which, he said, will further eliminate the small and medium businesses, small shops and opportunity to create more jobs.