Gurgaon, India ? Pushing his cart through the gleaming, air-conditioned aisles of one of India’s first supermarkets, Vikrant Mehta was relieved to buy his family’s potatoes, mango chutney and hair oil “all under one roof.”

While his wife cooed over the shiny tomatoes, Mehta said he didn’t miss India’s infamous open-air bazaars, with their buzzing flies, haggling peddlers and surging crowds. Even the friendships – with the fruit seller who provided health advice and the carpet man who offered loaners – were, “frankly, a huge amount of pressure,” he said.

“I’m not here to make friends. I’m just trying to shop,” said Mehta, an executive with Air India. “Finally in India the customer is king.”

Supermarkets and other large chain stores are on the rise in India, just one way that this country’s growing affluence is slowly changing its people’s habits. Rising with the stores are megamalls, brightly lit and futuristic, that tower over the hundreds of fruit and vegetable vendors in New Delhi’s booming suburbs of Noida and Gurgaon.

India has a growing middle class estimated at 300 million people. With a total population of 1.1 billion and economic growth rates of 8 percent a year, the country is emerging as one of the largest consumer markets in the world.

An estimated 80 percent of India’s retail outlets still are neighborhood shops, consulting firms say. Still, there’s a growing sense that mom-and-pop shopkeepers eventually will be nudged out by chains, which can buy cheaply in bulk. India’s retail sector is expanding by more than $27 billion a year, according to the World Bank, and holds vast appeal for large corporations.

It’s hard to imagine an India without mazes of noisy, crowded street shops filled with garlands of marigolds, bags of masala chips, statues of Hindu gods and red wedding bangles. In lively markets in cities across India, the humid air is thick with jasmine incense mixed with sweat. Punjabi pop music thumps as samosas fry, carpets are rolled out and glittery saris are unfurled, all while donkey carts and cows wander by.

Large chains may endanger the small-time vendors who work in such markets, but they also could imperil an Indian ritual: bargaining. In a sign of what may come, Kolkata’s famed neighborhood of booksellers, home to the largest market for secondhand books in Asia, is being moved by the city into a mall.