New book chapter: The retail revolution in India

The Final Frontier?: The Global Roll-out of the Retail Revolution in India. by Jeffrey Neilson and Bill Pritchard. Chapter 10 in Supermarkets And Agri-Food Supply Chains: Transformations in the Production and Consumption of Foods.Edited by David Burch and Geoffrey Lawrence. July 2007. Edward Elgar Publishing

The Economist magazine has described India and the 'last frontier' of the global supermarket revolution. Such a metaphor implies 'closure', and that once India isn conquered, all the major world consumer markets will be pattered according to a comparable retail blueprint. While not challenging the genral contention that a supermarket revolution will occur in India over the next few years, this chapter has problematised the question of 'what kind of revolution' will take place. Rather than perceiving India's nascent supermarket revolution as 'global closure', the authors are inclined to interpret it as opening a space for an 'Indian variant' in the global supermarket system. They develop these themes through recourse to institutional analyses of the Indian consumer, the political economy of Indian retailing, and the likley effects of supermarket-led restructuring oin India's rural economy.