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Left, traders' body up in arms over ICRIER report
Published on Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 11:02 in 
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NOT TO OUR LIKING: Confederation of All India Traders has also said the report is biased.
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New Delhi:The Left is not happy with a report on the impact of organised retail on small traders by Conference on Deepening Financial Sector Reforms and Regional Cooperation (ICRIER).
The Delhi-based think tank submitted its report to the Commerce Ministry on what is the impact of organised retailing on small traders and its conclusion that organised retail is actually good for the system has attracted fire from the Communists.
"Last session also Kamal Nath (Union Minister for Commerce and Industry) told that they are waiting for this report and then we will take corrective action. That is what he told in the House. But unfortunately the report does not do justice to it," Tapan Sen, General Secretary, Centre of Indian Trade Unions, says.
Not to be left out the traders’ apex body, Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), has also accused the report of being biased and not reflecting the ground realities of Indian trade.
CAIT Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal says, "We have decided to carry an independent survey through some responsible and reliable agency. Very shortly we will be asking the agency to come out with the results. We are taking the issue to the parliamentary committee, we will take this issue to the prime minister and we will take this issue to all the political parties."
The biggest complaint against the ICRIER report is the small sample size.
ICRIER has taken 197 farmers, 2,020 unorganised retailers, 100 intermediaries, and 1,318 consumers as samples and the fact that only 10 big cities were sampled is being seen as another shortcoming.
But with the survey predicting a 45-50 per cent annual growth for the organised players and traders insisting that the entire sector will grow at only 13 per cent, it is pretty clear that the growth of the big guns will come at the cost of the millions of people employed in the present retail sector.
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