Business Today: Editorial

When Shopping Strikes...

The age of the neighbourhood kirana store isn't over, whatever the establishment of gleaming new retail heavens across urban India might indicate. There are about 50 malls in various stages of development across our cities. Nearly a fifth of those are in Delhi alone. Is this a good thing? Not if you take a look at their parking lots.

Sure, organised retailing in India yields about Rs 6,000 crore today. That figure is likely to soar to Rs 35,000 crore by 2005. This includes malls, food and grocery supermarkets, and superstores run by big brand names. Southern cities like Hyderabad and Bangalore specialise in giant grocery stores and mini-malls that rise from the foundations of gracious old bungalows.

On the face of it, malls make a lot of sense. They can offer larger discounts because of volumes, they make shopping easier and convert it into entertainment. There's the problem with malls in India: from all indications, people flock to them primarily to have a fun time.

In Ansal Plaza in Delhi there are more people who come to gawk at the glittering steel and marble facades, ride the escalators, romance in the amphitheatre than do any serious shopping. Outside, cars waiting for entry pile up on a road that was overwhelmed the day Ansal opened. Crossroads in Mumbai is now the scene of a daily traffic jam during peak visiting hours. Bear in mind that the average parking lot of an medium-sized mall in the US is the size of Ansal.

When malls began taking over the American landscape in the 1980s, they were set up outside cities. And even then, only after approval from local councils and residents. Today, no mall can go up if it cannot convince the locals that it will not increase traffic congestion and make their lives more difficult. Unfortunately, locals in India are notoriously disconnected with their neighbourhoods. So every large vacant plot of land is a potential target for a mall lord-never mind that there is only a strip of a road outside.

In the southern cities, grocery supermarkets have invaded once-pristine residential areas, creating unmanageable traffic chaos on two-lane roads where families once strolled under gulmohars and rain trees. The problems lie with lax zoning laws, retrograde land rules, and miserable enforcement, which is all to easily subverted.

To return to the entertainment factor, there's nothing wrong with that. Malls are actually good hang out places for growing urban populations. But the retail revolution can only disfigure our cities further if local governments do not act now. Malls can easily be located outside cities in small communities. In many countries, malls have helped local communities with jobs. These may be low-end jobs, but for the great ranks of unemployed young and educated people in the Indian countryside they could be a good start to life. On the edges of many cities lie great swathes of land occupied by rusting ''industrial estates'', embodiments of flawed policies that believed the small entrepreneur could do it all. Unfortunately, this has rarely happened.

If local officials have the vision, this land-acquired with great effort-could easily be put to use to meet the coming retail boom. Already roads exiting major cities are becoming wider and better. The automobile explosion has already shown that Indians who have cars, will travel. If these malls lure them away from clogged cities towards edge communities who could benefit from their presence, all the better. Only if this happens will India really be ready for the shopping mall.

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