Foreign direct investment in retail market in India: some issues and challenges

India being second most-populous country has immense scope for retail expansion as along with time urbanization and consumerism has also been increasing. Further, India‘s GDP has also been growing at fast rate as it continued to be the second fastest growing economy in the world after China and as the income of the country increases, demand for goods also increases because there is positive relation between demand and income. Initially India was conservative regarding FDI; it imposed restriction on foreign companies to limit their share in equity capital of their Indian subsidiaries but over the time Government of India gradually liberalized foreign investment in various sectors. Recently in 2011 India permitted 100% FDI in single brand retail and in 2012, 51% FDI permitted in multi brand. In this paper we are analyzing the impact of such decision on various sectors like food retail sector, farmers, traditional & employment and food inflation.