Billing and udhaar for shops across Odisha, from the haat to the town
Raja week crowds, haat day buying and the harvest udhaar are written on your phone, not kept in your head.
Where an Odisha counter loses count: Raja week, haat day and the cyclone warning
Raja week, when the daughters of the house are your customers
In Raja week the girls of every house come for new sarees and frocks, bangles and alta, and their mothers for flour, jaggery and coconut for the pithas. Within one afternoon a mother wants a bangle size changed, another asks you to keep a saree aside till evening, and a third says she will pay when the paddy money comes. By night half the sales are in your head and the other half are on slips under a weight.
The sacks bought on the ground at haat, and no bill
You buy on haat morning from farmers who sit on the ground with their sacks, and none of them gives you a bill. The sack is weighed on the farmer's mat, the price is said aloud and the money changes hands. By the next haat you cannot say what you paid for which sack, or how much of it is still on the shelf.
After the cyclone, the notebook is the first thing lost
Many families take rice, flattened rice, candles and matches on a promise to pay when the road opens again. After the storm the notebook is damp, or the shop is cut off for days, and the list of who took what is the first thing you cannot read. The wholesaler is hard to reach.
From the Raja week queue to the haat-day sack and the cyclone shelf
The Raja bill the mother keeps until the paddy money
A mother takes alta and a saree for her daughters in Raja week and says she will pay after the paddy money. The bill goes to her own phone with each item and the day. When the money comes there is nothing to argue about: the amount is on her phone and the same on yours.
The sack weighed on the farmer's mat goes on your stock at once
When you buy on haat day, open a page for the farmer by name and put in the kilos and the rate as the sack is weighed. The lot joins your stock that minute. At the next haat you see what you paid, how much has sold, and how many sacks to take.
The dry phone after the cyclone
After the storm the road is shut and the shelf is in a mess, but your phone is dry. The names of the families who took rice, candles and matches before the warning are on it, so you know whom to trust with the next lot while the water is still going down.
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What helps an Odisha shop through Raja week, haat day and the cyclone warning
Credit book (khata)
One page for a farm family, with each oil packet, school copy and bar of soap on its own dated line, from the lean months to the paddy sale.
Bills on your phone
A bill for a gamuchha or a packet of alta, small as the sale is, that reaches the customer's WhatsApp before she leaves the haat.
Orders to suppliers
An order to the city wholesaler sent from the phone the evening before the market bus, and what came off the bus noted against it the next afternoon.
Low stock warnings
A sign that rice, candles or matches are running low, while the road to the wholesaler is still open.
Daily reports
Each day's sales on its own line, so haat days and the days between can be set side by side.
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Balasore prawns, Sundargarh steel and Keonjhar ore: Odisha by district
Every district of Odisha earns in its own way, and a shop owner there knows what the customers do for a living.
- Balasore district has been declared Odisha's production and processing cluster for scampi, the freshwater prawn.
- Sundargarh is an industrial district of Odisha, with a steel plant, a fertilizer plant, a cement factory and spinning mills.
- At Kalinganagar in Jajpur district, industrial firms use chromite ore. A sharp price rise in 2021 pushed several plants towards closure.
- Keonjhar is one of Odisha's top mineral districts. Iron ore covers most of it, and manganese ore is found at Joda East and Barbil.
Weaver and bamboo groups in Odisha that put their stock and sales online
Questions from Odisha shops about haat suppliers, family pages and Raja week
The farmers on haat day give me no bill. Can I still keep a record of what I buy from them?
Yes. Open a page for the farmer by his name and put in the sacks, the kilos and the rate each time you buy. The stock goes up as you enter it, and you see his page whenever you meet him again.
In Raja week the daughters buy alta, bangles and a saree on the father's udhaar. Can his page show that apart from the house's rice and dal?
Yes. The alta, the bangles and the saree are their own items, so the Raja lines stand apart from the rice and dal on the father's page. After the week he reads what the daughters took, and the month's grain is not mixed into it.
A customer says the saree was cheaper last Raja. Can I show her the old bill?
Yes. Every bill is kept with its day and the rate it was made with. Open last year's Raja days and show her the line, so the talk is about what was written, not what each of you remembers.
A customer says she paid me in cash last haat, but my page shows nothing. What do I do?
Note every cash payment on her page with its day, as she hands it over. After that the page shows what she took and what she has paid, and the question has an answer you can read to her.
Berhampur silk, Cuttack filigree and Mayurbhanj leaf plates
Berhampur is often called the silk city of India. Its Phoda Kumbha saree and its Joda craft got a GI tag in 2012. A GI tag is a registered name that says a craft belongs to its place, so a saree shop there can say where its cloth comes from.
Cuttack is home to silver filigree, jewellery made of fine twisted silver wire. Its craftsmen get business from the city's Durga Puja, which had 165 puja committees in 2019, so a good part of their work arrives in the puja weeks.
Sal and siali leaf plates are a main trade in Mayurbhanj. Betanati in the district is one of Odisha's two main leaf plate trade centres, according to a report from 2008, and traders there deal in plates made of the two leaves.