Billing for your medical store in Bihar
A full strip, five loose tablets and the old patient's monthly account, each billed at its own rate.
What a Bihar medical store counter needs first
Bills on your phone
A bill with the brand you gave in place of the one on the slip, a strip and a bottle of syrup, each at its own price on one slip.
Sell to other businesses
The clinic or nursing home applies to buy from you on credit, and each phoned order is billed to its own page.
Credit book (khata)
A page for the villager who pays on the next haat day, with his village written beside his name, so two men of the same name from different villages are not mixed up.
Low stock warnings
A low-stock warning on the ORS packets and the fever strips comes while the distributor's van can still take your order, which in the rainy weeks may be the last chance for days.
Orders to suppliers
The distributor's order for the rainy-season medicines written from last year's days, before the first heavy rain.
From the clinic's page to the weeks the roads closed
The nursing home's boy is back before the next patient is called
The boy's trip is short because the order was ready: the medicines are packed while the clinic is still on the phone, and the bill is already made. He takes them from a table, not from the walk-in queue, and is back at the nursing home before the next patient is called. The nursing home does not wait on the shop's line.
The haat-day patient who pays on the next haat
A man from a village comes in on market day, takes the medicines for his family and says he will pay on the next haat. Open a page in his name with the village beside it. The medicines are on it with the day, and on the next haat you read it down together and take the money.
How many days the fever strips lasted after the van stopped
When the rivers rise the road goes under and the van stops. The daily report of the flood weeks shows that wait as one figure: the days from the last van to the day the last strip of fever tablets went. The order is written against that figure, not against an ordinary week.
A clinic's phoned order, rivers that close the road and a market-day crowd
The nursing home that phones its order and sends a boy
Clinics and nursing homes in the town phone in a list of medicines and send a boy to collect it. The boy waits at the counter, the list is read out over the phone, and the owner pays at the end of the month. By then the figures are on scraps of paper and the clinic's own list does not match yours.
When the rivers rise, the roads close and the van does not come
In the monsoon the rivers rise and roads to some villages are cut for days. The distributor's van cannot reach you, and families buy fever tablets, ORS and stomach medicines in larger lots before the water arrives. You are not sure how much is left, and the box of fever tablets that was full on Monday is empty on Thursday.
A cold-wave January, cough syrup and the neighbour who comes for the old man
In the cold-wave weeks of January, cough syrups and tablets for chest and throat sell fast, and the old people who need them stay at home. A neighbour or a grandchild comes with a slip instead. He does not know the brand, the old man cannot be asked, and the page for that family has three people's names on it.
Medicine counters across Bihar's towns and villages
A medicine counter in Bihar serves the town and the villages around it, and each of these districts has its own trade.
- Patna has long been a major farm hub and trading centre, with grain, sugarcane, sesame and Patna rice among its busiest exports.
- Muzaffarpur farmers grow the GI-certified Shahi Litchi, and the first air export of it to the UK, in May 2021, was sourced from them.
- Madhubani painting, now made on paper and cloth for sale, has become a primary source of income for scores of families in the district.
- Darbhanga is famous for its trade in fish, mango and makhana.
What medical store owners in Bihar ask
In the flood week the ORS packets go faster than the fever tablets. Can I be warned about the packets first?
Yes. Set a higher level on the ORS packets than on the fever tablets, so the low list shows the packets first. Order them from the first van that gets through, before the shelf is bare.
The clinic's list has a line my page does not. How do I find the day it went wrong?
Read the clinic's page down by day. Each phoned order is a bill with its date, so you and the boy go day by day until the two lists part. Another brand shows as its own item.
In the cold wave a grandchild comes for the old man's cough syrup and does not know the brand. What does the bill give him?
Bill the syrup under its brand name, so the bill says what was handed over. The grandchild takes the bill home on WhatsApp, and next time he shows it and you hand the same brand.
A chemists' strike and a November cattle fair
Over 40,000 medicine shops across Bihar shut on 20 May 2026 in a chemists' strike against online medicine sales and new policy changes. That is tens of thousands of counters in one state, and the day's sales that stopped on the strike day show up as a gap in the daily report.
The Sonepur cattle fair, held each November on Kartik Purnima where the Ganges meets the Gandak, is one of the biggest cattle fairs in Asia. A chemist in Saran can read last November's days in the daily report before the next fair, and stock up to the crowd that came.