Judgment Day for Wal Mart and some Indian echoes

Everyone knew that the darling of the consuming class in the US, Wal Mart would get its just come-uppance sooner than later for its anti-labour practices.

A US court has allowed female employees to sue it for discrimination. This class action suit, the US media says, is the biggest of its kind in that country's legal history.

Look at the irony of the situation. Wal Mart manages millions of items every hour sourced from around the world in its unquenchable thirst for profits, but it said it could not manage the claims of all its female employees!

The Los Angeles Times website reports that the court made this observation to Wal Mart's claim: "The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Wal-Mart's claim that a class of more than 1.5 million employees — all of Wal-Mart's women workers since 1998 — would be unmanageable."

At home (here in India) Sonia Gandhi has suddenly developed jitters about the Wal Mart - Bharti retailing venture and asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to go over its possible impact on small traders closely. Media reports say she is worried that it might displace small retailers with terrible social consequences. I beg to ask, how is it different from the Reliance retailing venture, which is similar in scope and scale?

Incidentally, Reliance retail with the brand Reliance Fresh is an environmental disaster for India. How, you ask. More on that soon...