Billing for your stationery and book shop in Arunachal Pradesh
A parent's long class list in one bill, and a school's order on a page of its own.
Tirap, where a farming year and a school year share the same families
A stationery shop sells to children, and how their families earn decides when a notebook fits in the month's money.
- 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 school-term counter sells twelve things to every parent
A school library's list of fifty titles that the shop has to find
A school that is getting a library sends a list of fifty titles, some in Hindi and some in English, and expects you to find them. You search the shelf, the supplier's list and your memory, and write the ones you can get on the back of the list. A month later the school asks for the rest.
Volume one in April, volume two in the middle of the year, and nobody remembers the edition
A parent takes the first volume of a textbook in April. In the middle of the year she is back for the second volume. The school wants the edition she already holds, and nobody remembers which one she took. You guess from the cover, and the guess is the parent's money.
A teacher's chit for supplies, and an office you never meet
Goods go up to the school against a chit with the school's stamp. The office that pays is in another town, and you never meet it. It sees only the chit, a stamp and a few words, and has never seen your shop. If a line on the chit is unclear, the office pays for what it understands and you wait for the rest.
Tools for shelves of notebooks, pens, charts and textbooks
Bills on your phone
A bill for forty photocopied pages and a notebook, the pages counted at their rate, sent to the student's phone.
Low stock warnings
A level on the textbooks and notebooks of the first month, so the warning comes before the children who arrive without a book empty the shelf.
Godown stock
The textbooks and registers in the school's store room counted apart from the shelf in the shop, so a bundle set aside for the school is not sold at the counter.
From the class list on a torn page to the school's supply order
The titles you lack go to the supplier in one order, and the school hears the same day
A library's list is long, and most of its titles are not on your shelf. The ones you lack go to the supplier as one order, kept on the supplier's page. When the cartons come, you note them in, and the school is told the same day what you supplied.
Hindi and English books as two lines, so the right one goes into the bag
Add the Hindi-medium and the English-medium book as two items with the medium in the name. A bill shows which was sold, and the stock keeps them apart. A helper at the counter reads the name on the screen and takes the right book off the shelf.
A new library's small things on the school's one page
When a school gets a library, the teacher comes back week after week for covers, labels and a register, a few at a time. Put the school on one page and make each visit a bill under that name. After a month the page shows what the library has taken so far, and the teacher does not have to remember which week she bought the register.
Dozens, reams and second-hand books: what stationers here ask
The school's bundle is made up over three visits as the titles arrive. How do I hold it apart until it is complete?
Keep the bundle as its own count in the store room, and move each title into it as it arrives for that school. The shelf shows only what is for sale, so a title promised to the school is never sold across the counter, and you can read the school's list against what the bundle holds.
A school library sends a list of fifty titles. How do I keep track of what I supplied?
Open a page in the school's name and write each title you supply with its date. The titles you do not have go on an order to your supplier, and when they arrive they are added to the same page.
A different teacher comes each month to take the school's supplies. Whose name goes on the page?
The school's. Open one page in the school's name and write each month's supplies on it, whoever came to collect them. The page is the school's account, not one teacher's.
1,885 schools, 159 libraries and textbooks that come late
Under the Shikshit Bharat to Shikshit Arunachal mission, the school network was rationalised from 2,890 to 1,885 schools, with works including 159 libraries, officials said in June 2026. A library is a room that wants books, and a shop near a school that is to get one is the first place a teacher comes to ask what is available. A library with new books needs shelves, covers and a register to write them in, and the shop near the school is where those small things are bought, a few at a time, over many weeks.
In April 2018 the All Papum Pare District Students' Union said government textbooks reach schools only in the middle or the end of the academic session. A child without a book in the first month is a child whose parent comes to a shop, and a shop that has the right book on its shelf on that day is the one remembered.