CALCUTTA, India - A farmers' group is supporting Reliance Retail Ltd.'s plan to open Western-style grocery stores in an Indian state, where communists recently attacked Reliance stores under construction.

About 200 residents of West Bengal state's Sangi village blocked a road for about an hour Thursday to show support for the retail company, a fully owned subsidiary of Indian oil and petrochemical giant Reliance Industries, said local government administrator D.P. Chakrabarty.

The demonstration ended peacefully and no serious disturbance was reported in Sangi, 60 kilometers (40 miles) north of the state's capital, Calcutta.

Reliance closed down a vegetable and fruit procurement center in Sangi after workers from the Forward Bloc, a communist political party on Aug. 18 attacked two of its retail stores, which had been set to open in Calcutta in August. The company has indefinitely postponed the center's opening due to the attacks.

The Forward Bloc fears that large, company-run retail stores like Reliance could cost jobs and livelihoods by squeezing out some of the roughly 12 million small, family-run shops that dominate India's retail market - estimated at more than $250 billion and growing at 20 percent a year.

However, the demonstrating farmers said the center had benefited them with better prices.

"The rates are constant, unlike those in the (local) market, which keep fluctuating during the day," the Times of India newspaper quoted local farmer Manwar Hussain as saying.

A Forward Block leader, Ashoke Ghosh, said his party would continue to protest against large company-run retail stores.

Reliance officials declined to comment.

The anger directed at Reliance underscores the growing resentment among many Indians who feel left out of their country's recent economic expansion.

Reliance's proposed Calcutta stores are a part of the company's 250-billion rupee ($6 billion) plan to build a nationwide retail network.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved.