India minister: Local traders not only ones hurt by produce retailers

India minister: Local traders not only ones hurt by produce retailers    The retail perishable goods market is coming alive in India, but not without significant resistance from traders, middlemen, and certain government officials.
   India's Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh said at a rural business summit in Delhi this week that the entry of domestic and foreign food retailers could significantly harm a subsection of Indians whose living is derived from acting as middlemen between growers and sellers.
   'There are people who are landless,' Singh told the Economic Times. 'They don't produce vegetables but buy them in small quantities from producers and sell them in the local market to earn their livelihood. If retailers start sourcing from producers directly, these people will lose their means of livelihood.'
   It's another example of the tenuous balance retailers must face in India. Reliance Retail — operated by the group owned by India's richest single man, Mukesh Ambani — has seen fierce resistance to its Reliance Fresh produce markets in some states. In the eastern state of Orissa, for example, the company opened a new store Wednesday only to have to shutter it for a few hours as protesters attacked the outlet. Most of the protests have come from local traders who fear being put out of business by larger retail chains, but increasingly the welfare of other parts of the perishable goods chain is coming under the public microscope.