Yahoo Finance India, 12 Feb 08

When he has a ready crop, Dnyaneshwar Nikam's day would often start with a phone call, typically to the local wholesale agricultural produce marketing committee (APMC) market, which has for decades been the only wholesale buyer of his produce.

These days, his phone list is a lot longer. It includes officials of Godrej Agrovet Ltd, Aditya Birla Retail Ltd and Reliance Retail Ltd and he carefully compares prices before promising delivery of his ripe but unharvested crop that day.

As Indians prepare for the army of retailers, who are drawing up plans to open stores in all sizes and price-ranges for them to buy from, the nascent industry is offering selling choices for farmers as well-from cooperatives to big retail firms to higher rates from APMC traders and even farmer-owned stores.

by Tanvir Ali, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan

Pakistan is the fourth largest milk producer in the world. About a third of the total milk produced by the rural families flows out to urban consumers and processing industries. In urban areas milk is available to common consumers in two ways: loose / unprocessed milk and packed / processed milk. Haleeb Foods Limited (HFL) is a local company that is at the forefront of product and packaging innovation. The main characteristic of the marketing innovation of HFL was the exclusion of big milk contractors from the supply chain in the late 1990s. Haleeb Foods works mainly with small-scale producers, directly (self-collection) or indirectly (contract collection). HFL has one of the largest nation-wide distribution networks delivering high quality products, even in the most remote areas, via a network of more than 1,100 distributors. Even though HFL is a company that insures the inclusion of small-scale farmers, there are still some limitations on its approach which might, in the long run, exclude small farmers.

New Delhi, March 11-15, 2007

The Conference explored innovative approaches and new business models for linking domestic and international consumer markets with rural entrepreneurs, producer organizations, and communities. Using a unique set of instrumental case studies of innovative business practices from across the world, the conference provided a forum for discussion and debate of how to best organize the agri-food sector so that it contributes directly to (a) reducing rural poverty, (b) increasing farm income and rural employment, and (c) promoting sustainable development. An integral part of this process will be evaluating the role of public-private partnerships and industry in facilitating the establishment of alternative business models, driving technological advances and catalyzing entrepreneurial innovation within rural communities.

Examining the nature of CSR in India
Sood, A.; Arora, B. 

United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), Technology, Business and Society Programme Paper Number 18, November 2006 

Abstract [adapted from author by www.eldis.org ]

Although milk production has shown remarkable growth in Andhra Pradesh over the past decade, the potential role of dairy farming as a means to improve household incomes and create rural employment is far from being fully exploited. 

International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF) and the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) have announced a strategic partnership to engage business as a partner in sustainable development in Pakistan's rural communities. The partnership includes Nestle Pakistan, and has a focus on the dairy sector.

Z-Net Article by Partho Sarathi Ray.  August 21, 2007

After agriculture, the retail sector employs the largest number of people in India. Of the 40 million people involved in retailing as an economic activity, 0.5 million are in organized retail whereas around 39.5 million people are employed in unorganized retail trade. This includes all sorts of small retailing operations ranging from neighbourhood "mom-and-pop" shops to street vendors to small farmers who travel to cities daily to sell their produce to the small-scale transporters who transport the retail goods. These 40 million adults in the retail sector roughly translates into 160 million dependents, making the retail sector the source of livelihood for approximately a sixth of India's population. The decade of liberalization, which has seen stagnation in the agrarian economy and large scale job losses in the manufacturing sector, has pushed more and more people into different aspects of retailing in absence of any other opportunities.

Photo: Planet RetailMarket traders are ready to wreck a retail revolution.

The Indepdent (UK), 17 June 2007. Story by By Richard Orange in Mumbai

"A riot will happen. In Jharkand, it was only one shop. In Mumbai, we could destroy 100 shops."

Ever since mid-May, when an angry crowd of vegetable vendors tore apart a newly-opened Reliance Fresh supermarket in India's Jharkand state, young men like Shamrao Patil at the Vashi vegetable market in Mumbai have been waiting for Reliance Industries to bring its retail revolution to town.

The Final Frontier: The Global Roll-out of the Retail Revolution in India. by Jeffrey Neilson and Bill Pritchard.

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.

New report by Chahoud, T.; Emmerling, J.; Kolb, D.; Kubina, I.; Repinski, G.; Schläger, C. / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) / German Development Institute (GDI) , 2007 

Summary (c/o Eldis)
This report assesses the impact of the current the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) on industry in India. The paper dicusses the history of CSR and India and the more recent experience with multi-stakeholder initiatives. The study finds the progress on the implementation of the UNGC has proceeded slowly at the local level and that business self-regulation is still dominant.