[Business Today]

Published date: 12th Jun 2011

“Chamko… kapdon ke liye behtereen sabun. Bar-bar, lagatar. Chamko. Kapdon mein chakachaundh chamak lane ke liye. Khushbudar, jhaagwala-Chamko.”

Romance blooms when charming salesgirl Deepti Naval turns up at the bachelor digs of the shy and; gawky Farooque Shaikh to peddle a new brand of detergent in ‘Chashme Buddoor’. Life has changed so much since Sai Paranjpe made this movie 30 years ago-you don’t get to see any empty streets in Delhi, nobody has the time to entertain salespeople who want to whip up a lather in a bucket of water, and you are bombarded by text messages and TV commercials for thousands of products as you rush about.

A video on the Unilever website says people worldwide will have purchased 330,000 of the company’s products in the five minutes it takes to watch the promo. I don’t know if anybody has calculated how many bars of soap are sold every second in India, but the arena is very competitive-a 2010 estimate put the size of India’s FMCG market at ₹1.3 trillion (nearly $30 billion). I counted 25 soap manufacturers, and 30 makers of ‘synthetic detergents and scourers’, and there must be hundreds of smaller firms snapping at the heels of the big boys of FMCG. So the days when our homes were dominated by Dalda, and Lifebuoy, and Sunlight are long gone. If you walk into a kirana store or a supermarket you are spoilt for choice.

Interestingly, Hindustan Unilever’s Chairman Harish Manwani says HUL’s brands are doing better in supermarkets than in mom-and-pop stores. But the battle to get those brands into every home across this vast nation is fierce, and research and technology combined with the old Unilever tradition of venturing deep into the countryside make for a fascinating tale that starts on page 68.

People in the countryside matter much more than as consumers. When the results of five state elections were declared on May 13, voters dealt sledgehammer blows to hubris, arrogance and corruption. But oh to be a voter in Tamil Nadu! Already smothered by goodies from Karunanidhi’s DMK, the lucky Dravidas are now bracing for a tidal wave of freebies from Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK. Women now rule three big states in India’s north, east and south (not counting the capital) and all three have ridden unabashed populism to power. Our election analysis starting on page 50 focuses on business and economics. You may think things look dire, but hope springs in the breasts of Bengali businessmen and across page 58.

Not so optimistic is the situation on land acquisition by the government for major projects. Over the decades legacies, disputes and divisions have steadily nibbled away at landholdings. Our land is overcrowded. and precious. Lives have been lost in protests over land acquisition. Harsh Mander, who heads a working group of the UPA’s National Advisory Council on land acquisition, has written a discussion paper that will be debated by the full council as we hit the newsstands. The discussion note (for the full text go to www.businesstoday.in/mander) recommends repealing the Land Acquisition Act of 1894 and its replacement by the omnibus National Development. Acquisition, Displacement and Rehabilitation Act. For a better understanding of the legal implications of the principle of Eminent Domain, read senior lawyer Rajeev Dhavan’s analysis on page 40.