Attention - Due To Allegations of Plagiarism, This Article Is Highly Suspect 

A Wal-Mart executive met with top Indian government officials Friday as the U.S. retail giant moved closer to entering the country’s booming, but much protected, retail business, through a joint venture with a local company. 

Wal-Mart’s Vice Chairman Michael Duke, whose visit has sparked protests from some political parties, declined to comment about the proposed joint venture with Bharti Enterprises Ltd., but the chief executive of the Indian company said both sides were “very close” to completing the deal. 

As is hardly surprising, protests have commenced over Wal-Mart’s move into India — and what you see on the left is just a sample of things to come.

See this article in The Hindu. “We believe Wal-Mart is going to ruin this country and millions of people will lose their jobs,” one protest organizer told the New York Times.

He’s right. Don’t be gulled by the Times’s description of the protest coalition as a “coalition of trade unions, traders, students and communist parties.” In the U.S., such demonstrations could be easily dismissed. In India, those are mainstream forces, and are taken very seriously by the Congress-led government.

Here is the website of the FDI-Watch anti-Wal-Mart coalition. The website makes some very good points about the impact of foreign direct investment on the Indian retail sector, and on Indian society as a whole.