Billing for your chappal and shoe shop in Chhattisgarh
A pair in the right size, a family that pays after the season and a repair on a bill of its own.
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Tools for a counter that sells to forest families and haat buyers
Bills on your phone
A pair with its size on every line, so the page of a family shows which size fitted which child.
Daily reports
The days after the tendu leaf money came, read apart, to see which chappals the forest families chose.
Low stock warnings
The plain chappals of the common sizes shown as running out in the first week after the leaf money is paid.
Cement country and the weaving towns: who walks into a Chhattisgarh footwear shop
A footwear shop's customers live across the state's cement country and weaving towns.
- Baloda Bazar district has many cement plants fed by its limestone, and the Bhatapara mandi there is famous for crop buying and selling all year.
- Bilaspur is one of the districts, with Korba and Janjgir-Champa, whose weavers make GI-certified Kosa silk.
Why the weeks the leaf money comes fill the forest-village shop, and a string tied for a daughter's foot hides the size
The weeks the leaf money is paid, when the forest-village shop is full and the stock is thin
Families in the forest villages are paid for the tendu leaf they collected, and in the weeks after, the shop is full of people who need chappals, shoes for the children and a new pair for the field. The stock you ordered in the dry months is gone in a few days. You know it comes every year, but not which week, and not how many pairs. The shelf you fill in the dry months decides what you can sell in the weeks after, so a wrong guess then is felt for the whole season.
Women with children in the morning, men for the field after noon, and one heap for both
On a haat day the first buyers are mothers with small children, who want light chappals in small sizes, and after noon the men come for strong ones for the field. You lay out one heap for all of them, and by noon the small sizes are gone while the big ones are barely touched. Nobody wrote down which hour took which, so next week the heap is laid out the same way.
A string tied for a daughter's foot, and a size you have to guess
A father walks in from a far village with a piece of string knotted to the length of his daughter's foot, because she could not come. You choose a size from the string, he pays and leaves, and a month later he is back because it was too small. You never knew which size you had given, and he does not remember it either.
From last year's leaf-money week to the size that fitted the daughter last time
Last year's leaf-money week read back, to order this year's pairs
Open the days of the weeks after the leaf money came last year and read what sold: which chappals, which sizes, on which day the shelf thinned. This year's order is made from those days, and the stock for the forest villages is in the shop before the money is paid. After two or three years of reading those weeks you know the sizes of the forest villages better than the wholesaler does.
A heap on a sheet counted by the pair, from the bills made
Bill each pair as it is sold, with its size, and the stock of that size comes down by one. At night the phone shows how many pairs of each size are left, and the heap on the sheet is counted against it, so the strays are known and not lost in the dust.
The father's string held against the pairs, and the size written on the bill beside it
When a father ties a string to his daughter's foot, hold the string against the pairs on the shelf until one fits. Then bill that pair with its size on the line. The daughter's size is now a number on a bill, so the next string is measured against a size that fitted, not against a guess.
Questions Chhattisgarh footwear shops ask
A father brings a string for his daughter's foot. How do I use it to find the pair?
The string is the father's own measure, cut to the length of the foot. Hold it along the inside of the pair, from the heel to the end, and the pair it matches is the size. Try the next size the same way, and write the size that fits on the bill.
My heap on the sheet loses its small sizes first. How do I know what to bring to the next haat?
Take the night's list when you fold the sheet. The sizes you carry home are the ones to leave at the godown next haat, and the small sizes the mothers took first are the ones to bring more of. Pack the sheet from that list, not from the heap you had before.
Which heap should I lay at the front first at the next haat?
Look at the evening count heap by heap. The heap that thinned first goes at the front of the sheet next haat, and the heap that came home goes at the back. The sheet is laid from what the count showed, not from what you remember of the last one.
The Charan Paduka scheme and the tendu leaf rate
The state revived its Charan Paduka scheme in July 2025, giving one pair of footwear a year to up to two adult members of each tendu leaf collector family, over 1.24 million collectors in all. A pair given free is one pair, and the other members of the family still come to a shop.
In July 2025 the Chhattisgarh chief minister announced raising the tendu leaf collection rate from Rs 4,500 to Rs 5,500 per standard sack, and approved Rs 40 crore for the footwear scheme. Money that comes to a forest family in the leaf season is money it spends in the weeks after.