Small town and rural India: The dawn of new consumption
Gurpreet WasiIMRB
The rural landscape in India is hurtling ahead of the clichés in the urban imagination. The gawky youth in filmy looking goggles, tight jeans and fitted floral shirts, the Salman Khan clone, is no longer the popular imagery to represent the progress of India's villages.
Though the rural market in India contributes 70% of India's population, 56% of income, 64% of expenditure and 33% of savings, it is not the large homogeneous mass of popular presumptions. Not much can be aggregated except that it is...