Billing for your kirana and grocery shop in Odisha
Five families with one surname, a Rs 500 note and no change: your phone settles all three.
Why an Odisha kirana mixes up the Beheras, the change and the lamp-lit evening
Five Beheras in one notebook
Behera, Sahoo, Nayak and Swain are on half the pages of a village notebook. When a boy comes for oil and says he is from the Behera house, you have five Beheras to choose from, a father's name you half remember and a lane you have to guess. An entry goes under the wrong family, and when the dues are read out, a family hears a number it never ran up.
The five hundred rupee note and no change
A customer hands over a Rs 500 note for a Rs 37 sale, and the drawer holds only a few coins. You send a boy to the next shop to break the note, or you say she can settle tomorrow, and a small sale becomes a small udhaar that nobody writes down. By the end of the week these small sales are a large part of what you cannot account for.
The evening rush runs by lamp when the power goes
In the rains the power goes for hours at the time when everyone comes for rice, oil and salt. You light a lamp and serve by memory, because the notebook is too dim to read and the pencil is somewhere under the counter. Half the evening's sales are written next morning, from what you can recall.
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Leaf plate towns and mining districts: where Odisha's kiranas feed their neighbours
A kirana feeds the families around it, whatever they do for a living. A few districts, and what the people there do.
- Sal and siali leaf plates are a main trade in Mayurbhanj, and Betanati in the district is one of Odisha's two main leaf plate trade centres (2008 report).
- 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.
- 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.
Tools for a lane shop where many families share a name
Credit book (khata)
A page for the grandmother who buys on udhaar, with her bills sent to her grandson's phone, so the family sees what she owes and she never has to open one.
UPI payments
A QR code on the counter for the Rs 37 sale and the Rs 120 sale, so the drawer does not have to break every note.
Bills on your phone
A bill for rice, oil and salt that carries the lane's name beside the surname, and goes to the family's WhatsApp or to a grandson's phone when the grandmother has none.
Orders to suppliers
A note of the sacks that arrive from the wholesale lanes of Cuttack, as they are counted in, so the shelf and the notebook agree.
From five Beheras on one notebook page to the right page found by the phone's glow
Five Beheras, five pages, each with its own lane
Open a page for each family and put the lane or the father's name beside the surname, such as Behera by the pond lane or Behera, Ganesh. When the boy says he is from the Behera house, you ask which lane, find that page and put the oil on it. The right family hears its own number.
Small packets counted when the power comes back
In the lamp-lit rush many small packets leave without a bill: salt, matches, tea by the packet. When the power returns, count the shelf against the phone. The shelf and the cash box then agree, and a difference found that same night is smaller than the one found at month's end, and easier to trace.
The right Behera found by the phone's glow, in a power cut
A lamp lights half a notebook page. The phone lights its whole screen, and the page of the right Behera is one search away. You put the oil on it without bending over a smudged line, and the sale is on the page before the boy has left the shop.
A women's self-help group mart that moved its billing and stock onto one app
Questions Odisha kirana owners ask about names, change and the grandmother's udhaar
A daughter of the pond lane's Behera house marries into the temple lane's Behera house. Which page carries her udhaar?
The page of the house she now eats from. Leave the pond-lane page as it is, with what that house owes, and put her purchases on the temple lane's page from the day she moves.
In the rains the lane comes for oil and salt at once, and the lamp lights half a page. What do I do?
Bill each family from the phone and not from the page. Each bill is a few taps in the phone's own light, and the family's name sits on its page.
A sixth Behera family moves into the lane. Who finds its page on the first day?
Whoever serves it. The lane or the father's name is on the page, so the helper or the child at the counter asks one question, which lane, and opens the right page. Nobody has to know the family beforehand.
Malgodown in Cuttack and the trade centre at Rupsa
Malgodown in Cuttack, set up around 150 years ago, is described as Odisha's largest wholesale market.
In Balasore, Rupsa is where traders collect plates made from sal and siali leaves (2008 report). Like Malgodown in Cuttack, it is a trade centre, a place where goods are bought and sold in bulk.