Walmart gobbling up Flipkart means the dream of an Indian Alibaba is dead

Nowhere has the promise of India's booming middle class proven to be more hollow then when it comes to how e-commerce sales have panned out

On the face of it, the US retail giant Walmart buying out India’s homegrown online retail company Flipkart for $16 billion may seem like a ringing endorsement of Indian entrepreneurship in the e-commerce space.

But a closer look at the global backdrop in which Walmart has chosen to pay such a stupendous price for Flipkart shows that India will be the Kurukshetra for the mega battle between the two global retail behemoths Walmart and Amazon.

The BJP and the Sangh parivar have generally been cautious, even paranoid, about opening up the Indian multi-brand retail sector to foreign investment.