Billing for your grocery shop in Lakshadweep
Rice by the kilo, tea by the packet and the udhaar, all on one bill on your phone.
Loose rice, oil and sugar: where the sack and the notebook part ways
The sack at the back is never counted until it is empty
Rice, sugar and oil sell loose, by the kilo, the half kilo or a small bowl. Every sale leaves a little less in the sack than your head says, and the sack at the back stays a guess until the day it runs out. On an island that day is a bad one, because you cannot send a boy to the next town for a fresh bag.
The family who shops at the fair price shop and at yours
A house takes what it can from the fair price shop, and comes to you for what that shop has not got or has finished. The same house also takes tea, soap and biscuits from your shelf and says it will pay later. Two sources, one family, and the amount they owe you is spread over four slips and one memory.
Which shop the lane leans on
The fair price shop gives the families some of their rice, sugar and oil, and what it does not stock comes to you. You cannot tell from the shelf which of the two the lane leans on this month. Until you have the sales of each item, you stock the sack the families no longer need and run out of the tin they now come for, and neither shop is to blame.
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Tools for a grocery counter that waits on the cargo
Bills on your phone
A bill that puts loose rice by the kilo, cooking oil by the bowl and a sealed packet of tea on three lines, each with its own unit, sent to the house's phone.
Credit book (khata)
A page for a house that takes some goods from the fair price shop and the rest from you: only your own bills on it, each dated, with the payments beside them.
Low stock warnings
The items that are nearly gone, with sugar and rice at the top of the list on the evening before the order for the next ship is written.
Orders to suppliers
The order for the ship's cargo written from that list, and the rice, sugar and oil ticked off against it as the bags are carried in.
Online orders
The bag for the family at the far end of the island: its list, the stock behind each line, and the bag packed before they walk over.
From the opened sack to the packed bag
The small bowls that used to vanish between sacks
Oil sold by the bowl, sugar by the quarter kilo, tea by the small scoop: each is an item with its own unit and rate. The small sales that used to disappear between one sack and the next are now on a bill and off the stock, and the count in the phone follows the scale through the day.
One house, two shops, and a month that adds up
When the fair price shop is out of sugar and a house comes to you, put that sale on its page with the date. At the end of the month, when the house says it was only one kilo, open the page and show one kilo on the 12th and one on the 19th. Nobody has to trust a memory, yours or theirs.
The list that arrives the night before the cargo is carried in
A family at the far end of the island sends its list on WhatsApp the night before the cargo is carried in. On the morning the shelf is thin, so you pack first the lists for the goods you do have, and tell the others that the rice is still on the ship. The queue at the counter is shorter, because half of it has already been packed.
Who shops at an island grocery
The islands are one district, and the grocery counter serves the same people who work on its sea and its palms.
- The main occupations in Lakshadweep are fishing, coconut cultivation and coir twisting, and tourism is an emerging industry.
Women's groups that brought their shop records to one place
Questions grocery owners in the islands ask
A family says the fair price shop is out of sugar and asks if I have it. What do I tell them?
Read the sugar item's count on your phone and answer at once. If it is at zero, say so, so the house knows it must wait for the ship and does not walk to you twice. If you have it, they take it from you and the bill goes on their page.
A fisherman's wife takes goods while he is at sea. Can the bill go to her phone?
Yes. Put the sale on the house's page and send the bill to the number you have for her. When he is back, the page shows everything she took, with its date.
A family gets its rice from the fair price shop and buys only oil and tea from me. Does its page show only mine?
Yes. The page holds only what the family took from your shop, with the dates. What it draws at the fair price shop is not on it, so the page agrees with your cash box and your shelf.
How an island grocery gets its goods
Lakshadweep's essential commodities reach the islands on Port Department cargo ships and are stored in government godowns and cooperative-sector godowns before going to 29 fair price shops. A private grocery stands beside this system, and the family that buys from the fair price shop is often the same family that comes to your counter for the rest of the list.
In January 2021 the Lakshadweep administration decided to shift goods transport to the islands from Beypore to New Mangaluru Port, saying Beypore lacked berthing facilities. An owner does not choose the port, but a change of port is felt in what arrives and when, and so the order for the next ship is written with more care than a shop on the mainland needs.