Budget 2023-24 Strategies Unity Mall

The Unity Mall can be replicated and scaled up to many places more conveniently by the Railways. — Alok Singh

The vision for a self-reliant nation is taking shape. The confidence level of the youth is encouraging. The policymakers are seriously formulating their responsibilities and execution of the duties is continuous work in progress. There are many planned works for the self-reliance of the nation. The latest addition is the Unity Mall. 

The budget speech of the finance minister mentions that “States will be encouraged to set up a Unity Mall in their state capital or most prominent tourism center or the financial capital for promotion and sale of their own ODOPs (one district, one product), GI products and other handicraft products, and for providing space for such products of all other States”.

Unity Mall needs to be taken seriously. The mainstream media is not broadcasting it too much. The Unity Mall as proposed in the budget 2023-24 can be the game changer. We need not miss it. We are already delayed but the road ahead is bright and at the same time we can’t afford any lack of seriousness from the policymakers. The experience of missing the execution of the game-changer project of the semiconductor fabrication plant around the year 2010 should not be repeated. Our miss in semiconductor fabrication policy was gain to China and China’s time-dependent allies. We are trying to catch up but it will take decades to be self-reliant in the semiconductor industry. The Unity Mall is for local products which a buyer struggles to get in their neighborhood shop. The Strategy needs to be crystal clear for the Unity Mall. Every strategy has usually three parts. The first is analysis, the second is the formulation and the third is implementation. The Unity Mall can be seen using the lenses of strategy management.

The analysis has to be rational rather than emotional. The shelf life of sentimental or emotional activities is lesser than those of rational activities. Our country’s economy is savings driven. Every individual and family who struggles for daily survival will obviously look for cheaper products as it is their compulsion,  unless and until they follow some variety of barter system among themselves. The big question with a lot of doubt was the ways to counter big technology companies like Amazon and Wal-Mart-Flipkart, other big technology, and fin-tech companies. These companies whether wholly domestic brand or wholly foreign brand or domestic but with control of foreign finance or domestic but with control of foreign management were creating high entry barriers for local products.  The absence of domestic brands in the soft drinks market is proof of the unrealistically high entry barrier. The analysis resulted in the vision of a self-reliant nation with a mission to create local products. The objectives and constraints were clear to the policymakers. 

The formulation part resulted in the decision of constructing Unity Mall. The concern was to visit a market where local products are offered to customers. The exclusiveness of such outlets or such platforms will boost producers of local products and buyers of local products. The buyers of local products have to struggle a lot to visit a shop where they can be assured that they will get the local products. The organization of ‘Hunar Haats’ for sales and purchase of local products made by hand is usually an annual event. The customers want a marketplace where they can visit to get the local product at their convenient time and such markets should be available round the year in all the seasons; the customers of tier one and tier two cities will be delighted if it is operational round the clock.    

The implementation part of the Unity Mall is the physical presence of such infrastructure. The central government project where the state governments are also supposed to cooperate and invest has a hurdle of political interest and conflicts. The race between the state and union governments to promote their exclusive public projects and to label the grey area project as their own for political gain is a serious constraint. Those states where the government is friendly to the union government will cooperate properly while those states where the government is unfriendly to the union government and competes for vote share will derail the Unity Mall. This is the behavior within which the Unity Mall has to be constructed. 

The Union government is offering fifty years of interest-free loans to construct Unity Malls also. But the pity politics of regional parties whether allies or opposition,  see the vote bank as a priority, and the display of Unity Mall is labeled as a Union Government project, so expecting too much cooperation is unfair. The Union government can support some other reliable agency the same financial support that it plans to support state governments in case they construct Unity Mall.  There can be many alternatives to implement the project of Unity Mall. One alternative is to expect the Ministry of Railways to execute the job of constructing, maintaining, and earning from the Unity Mall. The Union government has railways in its control. The railways have a lot of real estate in their ownership. The Railway should take the lead and grab the opportunity to develop the Unity Mall. The Ministry of Railway can further develop exclusive Railway Unity Mall or Public Private Partnership Unity Mall or any other variant of the Unity Mall. The budget speech of the fiancé minister committed to one Unity Mall for every state whether in the capital city of the state or the financial city of the state or the most prominent tourism center. The Unity Mall can be replicated and scaled up to many places more conveniently by the Railways. The redevelopment of world-class railway stations can incorporate a scope of Unity mall in this project itself. It will be helpful in bearing the construction cost and will be a win-win situation for the railways as well as for the Unity Mall.

(Alok Singh is a Fellow of the Indian Institute of Management Indore, a freelancer academician, and associated with AGET Business School, Jhajjar.)

Share This