Billing for your hardware and paint shop in Gujarat
The pandal list, the harvest tarpaulins and the dairy farmer's milk-cheque credit, on one phone.
What a Gujarat hardware counter keeps on its phone, from the pandal bamboo to the harvest tarpaulins
Bills on your phone
A bill for ten bamboo poles, a coil of rope and a packet of nails for the pandal, sent on WhatsApp to the committee member who collected them.
Credit book (khata)
A page for the dairy farmer, with the can, the buckets and the chaff-cutter blade dated, until the milk cheque comes and the balance is cleared.
Low stock warnings
A warning when the tarpaulins of the popular sizes come near the mark you set, a week before the groundnut harvest.
Orders to suppliers
The order to the tarpaulin and sack wholesaler in the first week of October, with what arrived noted beside it. The tins for the second round of painting are ordered from what the first round used.
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Rajkot's metal workers, Surat's cloth traders and Vadodara's equipment makers: who buys at a Gujarat hardware shop
Three Gujarat cities and the workshops around them.
- Rajkot's Soni goldsmiths and silver craftsmen make jewellery, and the city is also known for textile printing and for metal and wood carving.
- Surat accounts for 70% of India's rough diamond cutting and polishing and 40% of its man-made fabric production, says the city corporation.
- Vadodara has over 35% of India's power transmission and distribution equipment makers, with an estimated 800 supporting ancillary units.
Garba pandal lists, tarpaulins for the groundnut harvest and a dairy farmer who pays on the milk cheque
The garba pandal organiser who orders bamboo, rope and nails by the list
Before Navratri the committee that builds the garba pandal brings a long list: bamboo poles, rope, wire, nails, tarpaulin, clamps and lamp holders. It is bought over several days, a few things at a time, as the frame goes up, and the date of the festival does not move. On the fourth day the shop is asked about what was said on the first, and the list is longer than anyone's memory.
The tarpaulin week before the groundnut harvest
When the groundnut is ready, farmers come for tarpaulins to dry the crop on, for sacks, sickles and rope. Tarpaulins come in sizes, and the same family wants two of one size and one of another. The sizes are written on the slip as just 'tarpaulin', and by the third day the shop cannot say which size has finished.
The milk can on one page, the chaff-cutter blade on another
A dairy farmer takes milk cans, buckets and a chaff-cutter blade over a season, and in the busy weeks he sends his boy for cattle-feed sacks too. He settles on the day the milk society pays him. Each of these is small, and by that day the list of the season is long.
The pandal list read from one page, the tarpaulins counted by size, the milk-cheque balance read with the farmer
The pandal list on one page, each collection a bill with its day
Give the committee a page. Each day's collection goes on as a bill, with the day and the items. When the committee asks for the total, you read the page down, and no slip has to be found. The pandal's last day is not a search for missing paper.
Tarpaulins as items by size, the count read before the next family comes
Make each tarpaulin size an item. Every bill takes its size off the count, so at closing you see which size has finished and which is still on the shelf. The order to the wholesaler follows the sizes that went, not the word 'tarpaulin'.
The farmer's page, the can and the blade together, read at the milk cheque
Give the dairy farmer a page, and put the can, the buckets and the blade on it with their days. When the cooperative pays him, he comes and you read the page with him. The balance is one number, and nothing sits on a second page. A contractor who works for five families no longer carries five accounts in his head.
Questions Gujarat hardware shops ask about garba pandals, harvest tarpaulins and milk-cheque credit
Two committees in my area are building two pandals and both buy from me. How do I keep their lists apart?
Open a page for each committee in its own name. Every collection is a bill under its committee's page with its day, so the two lists never mix, and each committee reads its own total.
In the harvest week a farmer asks for a tarpaulin, sacks and a sickle together. Can one bill carry the three?
Yes. The tarpaulin is an item by size, the sacks an item by the piece, the sickle an item by the piece. One bill carries the three, and the evening's counts show whether the sacks or the sickles went first.
The garba committee wants three lengths of rope, for the corners, the gate and the stage, on one bill. How do I count them?
Bill the three lengths as three lines in metres on one bill in the committee's name. The coil's metres come down by all three together, and the metres left are on the phone.
Bhavnagar and Junagadh: trade and farming behind the Gujarat hardware counter
Bhavnagar is an important trade city, 50 km from Alang, the world's largest ship-breaking yard, and is famous for its ganthiya snack. A hardware shop in a trade city serves traders and shopkeepers as well as households.
Junagadh's economy is mainly farming: over 65% of the area is under oilseeds, mainly groundnut and cotton, and the National Research Centre for Groundnut is here. In a farming district the hardware shop sells to the field as often as to the house.