Billing for your grocery shop in Arunachal Pradesh
Ten small things in one minute, and each neighbour's udhaar on a page of its own.
From the scoop of rice to the neighbour's page
The list for the once-a-day vehicle, made the evening before from the stock
One vehicle brings goods each day, so an item missed from tonight's order is an item missing for a whole day, and no second run fills the shelf. Look at the evening's stock for the goods that would not last another day and put those on the vehicle's list. The ones that can wait a day, leave off.
Ten families, ten long lists, ten bills to ten phones
When the hamlet comes down, each family reads out its own long list of salt, soap, oil and tea, and pays from its own pocket, some in cash and some by UPI. Make a bill for each family while its list is read out. The ten bills go to ten separate phones, and each family walks home with what it paid for.
The boy's tea and sugar under his household's page
The boy who comes for tea and sugar gets his line under his household's page, not a line with only a first name. The old man two lanes away has a page of his own, with the tobacco and the matchbox on dated lines. When either side brings money it goes on that page, and the last line shows what is still due.
Rice, maize and millets in Tirap, where over 80 percent farm
A grocery shop here sells what the farms around it grow, so what grows nearby is what a shop owner learns first.
- Tirap's economy is farm-based: over 80 percent of people depend on agriculture, rice is the main crop, with maize, millets, oilseeds and vegetables.
Why a hill grocery loses a little from every open sack
Rice from two hands: the valley's and the one that comes up by vehicle
Some of the rice you sell is grown in the valley and some comes up by vehicle from town. Customers have a favourite and say so, and the two have different rates. The sacks look alike in the back, and the scoop does not know which it is lifting. When the road is slow it is the vehicle rice that runs out first, and you learn it from a customer's face.
Salt and soap for a whole hill hamlet that comes down on one day
Households from a hamlet far up come down together on the day the vehicle runs, and each wants salt, soap, oil and tea. In an hour you serve ten families with long lists, each paying from a different pocket. The shop is full, the counter is tight, and some of the lists are never billed.
A neighbour's boy who takes tea and sugar, and a line with only a first name
A boy from next door takes tea and sugar for his mother, and an old man takes tobacco and matches. Each goes into the same notebook as a short line with a first name. After a few weeks two lines read the same and no one remembers whose they are.
.jpg){kind=link}
Tools for a counter of sacks, packets and small change
Bills on your phone
A family's salt, soap, oil and tea made into a bill and handed over on the phone while the next family's list is read aloud.
Credit book (khata)
A page for the boy next door's household, so tea and sugar taken at different hours of different days all land on one dated page.
Low stock warnings
A level for salt and cooking oil, so you order while the vehicle still runs and not after the hamlet has come down.
A store of women's groups that moved from paper billing to one stock list
Sacks, scoops and neighbours' credit: what grocers here ask
Salt comes loose by the scoop and in sealed packets. How do I keep both?
Add loose salt by the kilo and each sealed packet as its own item. A sale of a packet takes one off the packet count and leaves the loose salt alone.
The once-a-day vehicle brought half of what I asked for. How do I note only what came?
Note each item that arrived with its quantity, and leave the rest out. The stock counts only what is on your shelf, so the sacks that missed the vehicle stay low in the evening list, and tomorrow's order starts from them.
The headman orders for a village meeting, and the families give him rice or work in return. What goes on his page?
Only what moves between you and him: the goods he took and the money he pays you. What the families give him in rice or work stays between them and him, and is not on the page. The last line shows what he still owes the shop.
The Shantipur gate and Naharlagun's 700 shops
Border trade links Dibang Valley with Tinsukia in Assam, and vehicles carrying essential items enter the district through the Shantipur inter-border check gate. A grocery in the valley depends on a stream of trucks that has to pass the gate, and its owner learns early that the shelf follows the road. The owner who counts what the gate lets through knows how many days of stock are in the shop.
Naharlagun Daily Market near Itanagar, called the state's oldest market, held around 700 shops when a fire destroyed them in October 2022. A fire takes the notebook along with the shelf, so a shop whose accounts are only on paper can lose its list of what customers owe in the same hour as its stock.