-Reuters MUMBAI: Wal-Mart Stores Inc prepared its entry into India's supermarket sector in 2010 with a $100 million investment into a consultancy with no employees, no profits and a scant $14,000 in revenue. The company, called Cedar Support Services, might have been a more obvious selection four months earlier: it began its corporate life as Bharti Retail Holdings Ltd, according to documents filed with India's Registrar of Companies. The Cedar investment is now...

-The Indian Express After being taken to the streets, rallies and TV studios, FDI in retail is finally being discussed in Parliament. This may be a debate forced upon the government with the threat of persistent parliamentary obstruction, and submitting executive policy to voting in the House may be an extraordinary step that could be routinised at the system’s peril. But it is illuminating, nonetheless, to see the play of perspectives...

-The Economic Times A couple of months ago, the UPA government cleared Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in retail. It is a politically risky step. But for once, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh showed both spine and spunk biting the bullet. Since then, both Left parties and the BJP have expressed serious reservations over the decision. The general view is that it will affect the lakhs of small, indigenous kirana stores spread across...

-Tehelka Here are the gaping holes in the argument for FDI in retail. No smooth talk can pave over it TOUTED AS a cure-all for India’s economic ills, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail is at best an anodyne, and at worst, toxic. It is an attempt to lift markets by fabricating sentiment; signalling an economic turnaround without any concrete steps being taken to trim the fiscal deficit or boost manufacturing. All...

-The Indian Express The UPA’s cash transfer scheme — delivering over Rs.3.2 lakh crore in subsidies and welfare programmes to the poor, directly to their bank accounts — has raised fears in many quarters about the capacity of a rickety state apparatus to cope with messy implementation issues. Our collective self-confidence about being able to implement any new policy is so low today, we seem to be paralysed by the mere...