BLOG: Across the Border
In Delhi, what you need might be at the end of the lane.
By Sujeet Rajan
NEW DELHI: Imagine having four super Walmarts within a couple of miles from where you live, with each of the four Walmarts instead of having aisles of goods, chock-full of small shops, maybe a hundred of them, selling products and services. If you can imagine that, then you can begin to understand what most residential areas of Delhi are like, the burgeoning cluster of mom and pop shops everywhere that can easily beat malls in the US for crowd, and sales.
Take for instance Mayur Vihar, a vast middle-class colony in East Delhi that grew in phases since the 1980s, a mini city now. The metro train runs overhead – connecting West Delhi under an hour, serpentine toll expressways over the river Yamuna takes commuters to South Delhi in minutes. Agra and the Taj Mahal is less than three hours away on international quality four-lane roads, where you can drive legally at 100 kilometer speed, a glorious feeling after being shackled to under 40 km. speed on Delhi’s crazy traffic roads.
In one pocket of a phase of Mayur Vihar, encompassing a couple of miles, for newcomers the problem is not what you can get. You could get dehydrated in the summer heat searching the line of shops that stretch for kilometers, into other colonies.
Be thankful also every time you get back home that your feet didn’t get crushed by tires of cars, bikes and rickshaws that pass millimeters of you, a chaos of vehicles and driving wizardry that you cannot imagine unless you experience it. There’s no point in searching the Internet; most shops and services are not listed online, have no websites of their own.
Often times, what you are looking to buy might be at the end of the lane where you live. Zoning codes are blatantly ignored: small garages that could barely squeeze in a scooter or a bike when they were first made in the eighties to complement the flats (apartments) are now rented out for Rs. 1,500-Rs. 3,000 (around $25-$50) a month. From tailoring shops, magazine stalls, selling homeopathic medicine, room coolers, children’s and women’s clothes and school bags, it’s a riot of commercial activity from morning till night.
You may find CVS, Walgreens and Rite Aid stores in the same town in the US, but in parts of Mayur Vihar, there are a dozen pharmacies within walking distance. A pack of Zithromax cost around Rs. 70 compared to $30-$40 here in the US; hospitals, gyms and high schools closeted between shops, doctors’ offices (Rs. 75-Rs. 100 for a no-appointment visit) and clinics at every bend of the road, some tucked away in mini shopping complexes. Some flats have been totally converted to clinics; an entire extra floor added on top of two-story flats.
It’s hard to figure out if there are more clinics or hole-in-the-wall take-out restaurants and sweet shops. Fruit stalls are a fixture on most streets. Numerous mini malls, some a cycle rickshaw ride away – and some of which are as spacious as a Walmart – have aisles of vegetables, rows of cosmetics, kitchen ware, toiletries and office products – Indian-made brands as well as those that you get at any store in the US.
A trip to a dentist – no appointment needed – to take out a stuck fish bone: Rs. 300 (around $6). A tailoring job to tighten that expensive dress you got in New York: Rs. 100, done in two hours. Prescription eyeglasses delivered within the day, at prices that start at Rs. 300. Juice of a fresh cut coconut to cool you down: Rs. 30; a pistachio laden ice-cream cup at a Mother Dairy stall: Rs. 20.
As if enough mom and pop, son and daughter, niece and nephew, grandfather and grandmother shops are not enough in Mayur Vihar, there’s a weekly ritual: a ‘Monday Market.’
Ok, now again test your imagination: circling on the outside of one of those four Walmarts, imagine an array of some 200 open-air pop-up shops, that sell household products and clothes – plastics, bed sheets and linen, glass and metal bangles, T-shirts for 75 cents, cotton shirts for a dollar, steel , ceramic utensils, and more, every Monday evening for some four hours of frenzied activity, even as the regular shops are also open. Crowds throng the Monday market till about 10 p.m. in the summers. Some shops stay open even later.
A birthday party for my son at my parents’ flat in Mayur Vihar, with appetizers, beer, soft drinks, bottled water, tandoori chicken, chili paneer, and naan dinner, six large pizzas from Pizza Hut, a two-layered chocolate eight-pound birthday cake, party favors (chocolate bars), along with paper and plastic products, for around 50 people, cost around Rs. 15,000 (around $250). All products for the birthday party were got within walking distance of the flat, some delivered home.
Another birthday party for him later in Kerala at my wife’s parents’ house, with lunch for 70 people, cost even less – Rs. 10,000. He wanted yet another at Tumble Jungle in Connecticut with his friends, arguing that both times, in Delhi and Kerala, didn’t coincide with the actual date of his sixth birthday. I told him to wait for his seventh birthday.
If some of you are wondering if this blog is about getting you to calculate if it’s better to take a flight to Delhi, do bulk shopping, a visit to a dentist or a doctor, buy prescriptions, to save money, I have some bad news: my wife took me along when she went shopping in South Delhi. Three Anarkali-style dresses she ended up buying were more than the sum of the two birthday parties combined.
So what’s this blog about?
It’s a warning to Walmart, the world’s largest retailer based in Arkansas, who now operate 20 stores in India, through its joint venture with Bharti Enterprises, since 2009, and under its plan codenamed ‘Jai Ho’ – taken from the Slumdog Millionaire song meaning ‘Let there be victory’ – plan to be India’s top retailer by 2015.
Walmart has been unable to open a store in New York City because of fierce opposition from politicians and unions, but continue to build presence outside of the largest consumer city in the nation, pointing out that Big Apple residents spent more than $215 million last year at Walmart stores in the suburbs. Earlier this week, they opened a new store in Levittown, NY.
Delhi is the equivalent of New York City when it comes to consumerism in India. Despite their problems right now after allegations of bribery, and slow progress in getting permits and licenses in place, Walmart would aspire to set up shop in the nation’s capital soon.
But they would be well advised to stay away from Delhi and focus on its suburbs, like they are doing in New York. It would be hard for them to match the breadth of products and prices at the sprawling shopping complexes in the nation’s capital, to break the back of neighborhood shops.
The point for Walmart to consider is, how many repeat customers are they going to get, who would be willing to take on the traffic of Delhi’s roads, when they can get the same products and more at better prices within walking distance, or a short drive, in their neighborhood.
Jai Ho in Delhi? Maybe not.
(Sujeet Rajan is Editor-in-Chief of The American Bazaar)