Billing for your grocery shop in Puducherry
The rice by the kilo, the udhaar and the day's count, all on one phone.
From the one-kilo sale of rice to the count after Diwali
Every kind of rice with its own rate, by the kilo
Make each rice its own item, with its rate for a kilo. A bill for one kilo or for twenty is made in the same few touches, and it takes the kilos off your count as it goes. The woman mixing your rice with her ration rice gets her bill on WhatsApp if she wants it, and you get an honest count at night.
In the free-ration week the rice and sugar are already at home, and oil and dal lead the counter
In the week of the free ration a family has its rice and sugar at home before it reaches your shelf. Open that week's sales and see what it does here: rice and sugar fall, and oil, dal and tamarind lead. The week after, the rice returns. You see the swing in numbers and know what the counter is really selling in a ration week.
Idli batter: rice and urad dal weighed together, billed as two lines
Families that make idli and dosai at home buy raw rice and urad dal for the batter, and they ask for both in one go. Keep each as its own item, weigh them together, and bill them as two lines on one bill. Each comes off its own count, so you see how much dal goes with each sack of rice.
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Why a Puducherry grocer's rice shelf moves with the ration week and the batter week
A kilo of better rice asked for on the way home from the ration shop
Many of your families have just brought their ration rice home or are on their way there. They stop at your counter for a kilo or two of better rice to mix with it, and ask for dal and oil in the same breath. They are in a hurry, and at the rush hour the kilo is weighed, the money is taken and nothing is written. By closing the stock of that rice and the coins in the box do not agree, and you cannot say which kilo was not written.
The week the ration shop gives rice and the shelf goes still
On the days a family has just brought its ration home, the rice leaves your counter slowly and the rest of the list grows: sugar, oil, tamarind, the dal for the batter. Next week the rice moves again. You order by feel, and a bag sits on the floor while the oil runs out on a Thursday.
The tamarind that sits when the batter week has passed
In the batter week families buy tamarind, urad dal and rice together, and a block of tamarind sells in days. When the week passes, the rest of the block sits on the shelf for a month, bought at the batter-week rate and sold at nothing. By the next batter week it is a loss you remember but never wrote, and the money in the block is money you did not have.
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The Karaikal fields and the Puducherry families a grocer feeds
A grocer sells what the people around the shop earn, and in Puducherry that is the field, the boat and the pay packet.
- Most people in the Puducherry region farm, rear animals or fish for a living, while the educated work in industries and service jobs.
- Karaikal's farms grow paddy, cotton, groundnut, banana, vegetables and pulses, helped by the river that flows through the region.
Tools for a counter that weighs rice, dal and sugar all day
Bills on your phone
The festival bill, oil, dal and tamarind, made while the next woman waits and sent to her WhatsApp, with the staples line shorter than a usual month and everything else longer.
Credit book (khata)
A page under a family's name, so a notebook line that says only 'Selvi, oil, sugar' becomes dated bills with the items spelled out.
Daily reports
The idli-batter weeks, opened day by day, so you read how much urad dal went with each sack of rice and order the dal to match.
Low stock warnings
A warning on the dal, oil and tamarind that a family still has to buy once the free rice and sugar are at home, so these three are not bare in the ration week.
Women who sell through a mart and moved their paper records to a phone
Questions a Puducherry grocer asks about loose rice, part payments and Diwali week
Two sacks of better rice come from two millers, and she says one cooks softer. Can her bill say which she took?
Yes. Make each sack its own item and put the miller's name in the item's name, with its rate. Her bill shows the name she took, and next week she asks for it by that name and you pick the right sack.
The week looked like a rice week, and on Thursday the oil has run out. What do I do?
Do three things on the Thursday itself. Tell the families at the counter the day the oil will be back. Send the supplier the oil order that morning, and ask for it by the first vehicle. Write the next ration week's order before you lock up, with oil above the rice. The rice on the floor can wait, and so can the dal.
A family has its free rice and sugar for Deepavali and takes sweets and cloth on udhaar besides. Can the page keep the festival apart from the oil and dal?
Yes. Put the festival things on one bill and the weekly oil and dal on another. The page lists both with their days, so what the family owes for Deepavali is read apart from the weekly staples when it comes to pay.
Ration rice and the rice from the open market in Puducherry
Puducherry has around three lakh families under public distribution. In October 2024 the government announced free 10 kg rice and 2 kg sugar through fair price shops before Diwali. For a grocer that is a week in which many families arrive with their rice and sugar already at home, and the festival list they bring to you is shorter in the staples and longer in everything else.
Low-income Puducherry households told a 2016 report that they bought better-quality rice from the open market to mix with their ration-shop rice, which was too poor alone even for idli-dosai batter. That small, regular buying of a kilo or two is the rice sale a grocer makes every day, and it is why a bill for one kilo has to be as easy to make as a bill for twenty.