Mall Culture and its Place in the Indian Environment

chillibreeze writer — Bhavani Kuchi

Indians are no longer afraid to dream. Why, some farmers in Maharashtra got together to float a company to build a special economic zone out of their farmlands. In Punjab, a few aggressive farmers have dared to take on the retail might of the likes of Reliance, and Soubhagya, with their very own retail ventures.

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This in a nutshell, is the developing Indian retail story that is luring investors, domestic and foreign, to make a pitch for a portion of the great Indian market , its growing and ever-hungry consumers, and their apparently insatiable demand for all the good things in life -- from groceries to vegetables to fancy gadgets to fancier cars . The purchasing power comes from the growing industry and services sectors, and a small section of the rich agrarian buyers. 

If one looks at Gurgaon, adjacent to the union capital of New Delhi, any weekend presents a chaotic picture with traffic congestions and huge crowds of visitors crowding the twenty odd big malls that it houses. And this is only Gurgaon. At the other end of Delhi in the East is Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh which also boasts sprawling malls.
 
Sales and bargain deals, attractive prizes, and schemes are the sure fire success formulae that the shopkeepers and showroom and super bazaars use to lure visitors in huge numbers. Malls are a mega hit.  

And in fact, it is the semi-urban areas, small towns and cities, described as Tier II and Tier III towns (say an Amritsar or a Moga in Punjab, or Indore in Madhya Pradesh, or Nagpur in Maharashtra, or Pune for that matter) that are  powering the retail revolution which is sweeping the urban and rural areas. Malls, the temples of consumerism are cropping up everywhere. These malls have changed the way people are shopping. They are teaching them how to appreciate the good things of life. ‘Comfort’, ‘style’, ‘convenience’ and ‘cool’, are only some of the words used by the shoppers introduced to the mall culture.
 
And no one is complaining. Not the mall owners, not the shopkeepers, and certainly not the marketing men and women of the big brands. Malls are the battlegrounds where the brands, small, medium and big, the known, the not-so-well-known and the wanna-be ones, fight it out for the consumer’s attention. And the consumer is ‘loving it’ and asking for more.

Yes, this is one culture that consumers are happy about. So happy that no one seems to mind the 'unplanned expenditure' incurred by an outing to such an enticing place. They enjoy air-conditioned comfort, availability of a range of merchandise under one roof, and a one-stop family entertainment arena.

While the consumer is thus slowly getting hooked onto the mall culture, the owners of the malls are hardly complaining. Actually, they are busy planning the erection of new malls, and the more the merrier seems to be motto of the moment. Given the rate at which malls are coming up, the commercial as well as residential real estate business is spiraling upwards. The range and scope of the economic activity generated from mall culture promises many things to many people.
 
Other than offering shoppers more value for money, the scale of operations generates employment opportunities, direct and indirect, for thousands of people.   
 
India was to have some 350 malls out of which nearly 250 were planned in tier II and tier III towns, taking this revolution further. Now there is a new association of big brands that has come together to give brand loyalists something to cherish, aspire for, and much, much more. Gurgaon alone hopes to play host to some 150 odd malls.
 
But are all the investors who rushed into the mall business happy? Are the returns coming in? Going by the mall traffic on weekdays, this seems highly unlikely. Barring the ones that have hit the big time and built a stable, loyal customer base, the shop owners and showroom managers are worried. Worried, as the Indian customer is yet to vote for malls when it came to making concrete purchases that translate into turnovers and profits. He still votes for the friendly, neighbourhood ‘kirana’ stores when it comes to groceries, and for the shopping complexes where he has been shopping all his life.
 
For the big buyers, say for weddings, or corporate purchases, the preferred venues are still the traditional markets like the Johari Bazar in old Jaipur city where bargaining still rules. Trust and faith still matter the most. Mall owners and shop owners in the malls, wish that all visitors (often a visit to a mall is just seen as entertainment) would turn into customers. It’s no surprise that more than half of the malls report substantially poor occupancies, resulting in a depression in rentals.

The investors are not the only cribbers. Town planners are at their wits’ end trying to figure out where to fit in all the traffic and how to cope with the pressures on infrastructure that is already under severe pressure. If power is a perpetual problem, then parking blues refuse to go away, what with the addition of several thousand new vehicles adding to the Indian roads each day.
 
These are the problems that any politician, economist or administrator laments about as India drives along the development superhighway, punctuated with modern marvels – designer glass structures that seem to touch the skies, and a dazzling display of the fierce battle of brands .

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—About our writer:

Bhavani is a freelance journalist eager to tell the world the developing India story and writes on social, political, economic and business issues. Bhavani also is a follower of sports and sporting events, keen on travelling, music and movies.