FDI in India: Single-brand and Multi-brand Retail

On November 10, 2015, the Narendra Modi -led NDA Government announced ‘Big Bang Reforms’ that eased Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) norms across 15 sectors in India. The changes in various sectors aimed at further relaxing and simplifying the process of foreign investment in the country. The Retail Sector, one of the 15 sectors, accounted for over 10 per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and around 8 per cent of the employment in India’s economy as of 2015.

During the 1950s, post independence, when India’s economy was agrarian in nature and industrial development was in the nascent stages, the economy depended on external sources of finance and foreign capital was encouraged, though with caution, by the government,. The most important change in the FDI policy happened during the 1990s when the government announced liberalization, privatization, and globalization reforms...