Reliance Retail to venture into Non-Vegetarian food segment

Reliance Retail to venture into Non-Vegetarian food segment

News about Reliance Retail venturing into the non-veg segment and coming up with a non-veg chain has been doing the rounds for the last few months. So has been the silent but persistent murmurs criticizing Mukesh Ambani and the Reliance Group for coming up with this ‘unethical’ way of making money.

According to the news Reliance plans to get into this segment pretty soon and will initially be selling existing products until they come up with their own abattoir and manpower to roll out their own product. Initially the Retail group would be a part of Reliance Industries and a few years down the line it will be demerged into a different entity. According to the grapevine Mukesh has not yet been able to convince the market operators to stick with him for this venture. Seemingly this notion has not gone all that well with the broker community majority of whom are ‘jain’ and ‘marwadi’. Many HNI’s are crying foul over Mukesh for straying away from his ‘Gujrati Vaishnav’ beliefs, there are people threatening to pull out their investment from Reliance Industries, then there are those contemplating to stay out till the demerger, there are some special cynics who are urging Kokilaben to put some sense into Mukesh’s head, some are predicting that God will punish Mukesh and his group heavily if they go ahead with this plan.

Are these pig headed morons really concerned about ethical values here? If that were the case why didn’t they raise their voice and move out of Reliance when Reliance was ‘muscling’ and ‘greasing’ its way to superpower status, or is that the ‘Gujrati Vaishnav’ tradition supports such acts? As far as their threat to move out of investment in Reliance is considered, it should be taken with a pinch of salt. These pig heads are damn smart when it comes to making money; they know for sure that for every one of them prepared to liquidate their holding there would be hundreds looking forward to possessing it. With our markets opening up for the world, there will be many FII’s too - queuing up for those stocks, Mukesh might even get an offer to produce something to suit their palate on the eve of thanksgiving. As far as investments are considered Reliance certainly is ‘The Goose that lays Golden eggs’, and these morons, however vociferous they might sound, just do not have the spine to get rid of the Goose and its Golden eggs.

What then is the actual issue? It’s not at all an ethical question, because if that were the case why should cosmetics companies, cigarette and liquor companies and even the pharmaceutical sector (since they test their products on animals) be allowed to survive, and I am sure I have missed a big list here which some way or the other hurt animals. It’s not even a case of vegetarianism or non-vegetarianism, there is an age old squabble going on about it and neither side has ever managed to convince their opposition. This truly is a question for Mukesh Amabani, for him to choose between his business interests and traditional values. He, and only he, has the right to even ponder about this, every other word on this will be nothing more than noise out of clattering empty vessels. Mukesh’s business acumen might nudge to go ahead with the venture and he surely should do it then, but if his tradition beckons him not to do so he has every right to step away too.

If at all I see an issue out here, it is about the brutal treatment of animals while they are transported, it is about the pathetic conditions of abattoirs in our country (if you thought meat eaters do not have the right to think about that, that’s crap, as even a criminal with capital punishment is treated fairly in jails till death), it is about the use of children in these abattoirs, it is about the human deaths because of the unhygienic conditions that exist in these abattoirs, it is about the violence that builds up in the minds of teenagers who end up chopping live cattle in these abattoirs. That’s the issue which needs to be tackled, because there will always be a large population of non-vegetarians, leading to a large market for non-veg products and if not Reliance someone else will be tapping on to that.

As a matter of fact Reliance getting into this field might help solve quite a few problems. Reliance being such a premier group and always under the public spotlight, it might be forced to take up measures that are more human. The inhuman condition prevailing in the slaughterhouses of UP and Rajasthan might be replaced by hygienic ones, use of western technology and machines might eradicate the need of child labor. So if things fall into place properly, Mukesh can kill two birds with one stone - Improve the miserable conditions prevailing around the Indian non-veg industry as well as make handsome profits out of this new venture. Wow, so if he kills two birds with one stone, isn’t that ‘dugna munafa’!