Looks like Wal-Mart is partnering with a local Indian firm to bring low-cost goodness to the sub-continent. No idea exactly how this will play out, as, on the one hand, these "big box" retailers will most likely introduce the same economies of scale and affordability that have allowed Wal-Mart to single-handedly reduce the US's inflation rate by a full percentage point over the past ten years. On the other, it will also most likely decimate the inefficient, expensive, but most likely politically powerful "mom-and-pop" style shops that (according to the article) currently dominate retail in India, potentially triggering a backlash that will make what the rich white people in New England have been doing look like, well, what rich white people always look like when something sets them off*.

The thing is, entrepreneurialism seems to be comparatively new and weak in India, while socialist-style provincialism and strangling bureaucracy are depressingly common. India is too large and too diverse for even experts to predict exactly what will happen with its economy, so I won't even try. But this should be worth watching, if nothing else for the ideological fireworks it should set alight.

----
* "I say, where have all these brown people come from? Why, if they can't afford what my good friend Biff charges downtown they have no business being here! Jeeves! Get my phone!"