IN THEORY, THE battle for e-commerce in India should be a purely commercial one, in which two of the world’s biggest retailers, Walmart and Amazon, compete with each other and Reliance Industries, a conglomerate that also owns India’s biggest retailer. In reality, there is a fourth force: the prime minister, Narendra Modi, and untold numbers of small merchants that support his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). As nationalists, they naturally side with Reliance, which is led by Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man. That makes the battle visceral, mixing business, politics, xenophobia and billionaires.
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Before Reliance Retail, Mr
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