Billing for your mobile and electronics shop in Assam
The Bihu memory card, the pay-day phone and a customer who lives where the signal does not, on one phone.
A 5G phone for a village with no signal, a Bihu video that fills the memory and a copy done for nothing
A 5G phone for a family in a village with no signal
The customer has seen the 5G phone in a Guwahati advertisement, and he wants it. His village has no mobile signal at all. For him the phone will be a camera, a torch and a music player, and the first time he sees a problem he will blame the shop. You want to tell him, but you also want to sell the phone, and the notebook has no line where you can note what you told him. He leaves with the phone and a doubt, and you leave with a sale you are not quite proud of.
The Bihu dance fills the memory in one evening
A family records the whole Bihu dance on a phone, the singing, the dhol and the children, and the memory is full before the last song. The next morning someone comes for a bigger memory card, and another wants a power bank, and a third wants the video copied. You sell all three in a few minutes, and the notebook has none of them.
Copying the Bihu video is work the shop does for nothing
After the dance everyone wants the video, on a card or on a neighbour's phone. You copy it while they wait, one family after another, and it takes minutes each time. No one pays because it was never a sale. By the end of the week you have spent two afternoons on it and the notebook shows nothing.
Tinsukia's industry, Tezpur's old trade and Cachar's tea: who comes in for a phone
Phones sell where Assam works, trades and farms. A few districts, and what they are known for.
- Under the British, Tezpur became an important centre of trade and commerce, used as a river port for the surrounding tea gardens.
- Cachar is known for its tea plantations; paddy, vegetables, pulses and tea are grown on the plains along the Barak river.
- Nagaon is one of Assam's main jute-producing districts, and the Assam Co-operative Jute Mills, the country's only co-operative jute mill, is at Silghat in Nagaon.
From the memory card chosen for the dance to the copy that is billed
The memory card sized for the dance, billed with the power bank
Make each size of memory card its own item, and each power bank its own item with its capacity in the name. When the family comes the morning after the dance, one bill carries the card and the power bank together, and at the end of the Bihu week the list shows which sizes sold.
The Bihu video copy, a line beside the card
Make the copy an item with a rate. A family that wants the dance on a card pays for the card and the copy on one bill, and a neighbour who only wants the video gets a bill for the copy. At the end of the week the list shows how many copies the two afternoons held.
The estate's pay day, when the whole line wants the same phone
On the day the estate pays, workers come in a line from the same gate, each with the month's money and the same wish: the phone his friend has. The count of that model tells you, before the third worker asks, whether to say yes.
Tools for a counter of phones, memory cards and covers in the Brahmaputra valley
Your own online shop
A shop page of memory cards and power banks by size, shared in the village group before the Bihu weeks.
Low stock warnings
The large memory cards and the power banks shown as running low before the Bihu dance weeks.
Offers for regular customers
A small discount on the larger memory card for the family that comes back after each Bihu dance, shown on that card's bill.
What Assam mobile shops ask about memory cards, pay-day phones and village signals
A customer wants a 5G phone but lives in a village with no signal. Can I put what I told him on the bill?
Yes. Name the model and its network kind in the item, so the bill says 5G, and tell him plainly what he will not get in his village. The bill reaches his phone on WhatsApp with your word on it.
An estate worker wants the power bank today and will pay on pay day. Can I write it against his name?
Yes. Open a page in his name, put the power bank on it with the day, and write his payment against it when the pay day comes. The page shows what is still open.
After the dance everyone wants the video copied. Can the copy be a line on the bill?
Yes. Make the copy an item with its own rate. The bill carries it beside the memory card, and the week's list shows how many copies were made.
5G in Guwahati, and the villages with no signal at all
By February 2023, 5G mobile service had launched in Guwahati, while over 9,000 villages across the Northeast still had no mobile connectivity. A mobile shop in Assam sells to both, and the customers from the second kind of village are the ones who need an honest word on the bill.
Incredible India describes Tinsukia as Assam's industrial powerhouse for tea, oil, coal and commerce. A mobile shop in a town like that sells to estate workers, traders and visitors on the same afternoon.