This is not an excuse but a real issue which has now become a political battleground. A middleman is a one who buys product from the producer & sells it to the retailer, but b'coz of the greed to earn profits he buys the product at a very less price from say a poor farmer & sells it to the retailer at a very high price, retailer again having the right to earn profits sell the product at an even greater price resulting into inflation. Big retailers like Walmart directly buys the products from the producer & never involves any middleman in the process, but what this does is that it helps Walmart to offer huge discounts over it's product to the consumer making a middle class retailer bankrupt & even resulting into closing his shop, no way a small retailer can fight the might of $450 billion company like the Walmart, that's what the whole issue of FDI in retail is. If the govt. is allowing it at least the majority stake (51%) should be with an Indian investor rather the foreign company owning the majority stake in the JV.