Billing for your stationery and book shop in Tripura
A class list with a dozen notebooks, a pen and two second-hand books, on one bill that goes to the parent's phone.
What a stationery counter with school lists and a fair stall can write down
Orders to suppliers
The order of translated textbooks from the supplier before the term, and a note of how many arrived against how many were asked for.
Credit book (khata)
A page for a school that pays when its funds come, with every bill dated, so a long class order reads from the top.
Bills on your phone
A class's list billed item by item with its rates, so the teacher leaves with the bill and not with the pencilled slip.
Why a Tripura bookshop dreads the first week of term, with two class lists and one pencilled slip
Two editions of the same class book, and a parent who asks by school
A parent from a Bengali-medium school asks for the Class 6 science book. The shelf holds the English edition and the Bengali translation side by side. The helper hands over the one he knows, and the child comes back the next day with the wrong edition. Nobody wrote down which school wanted which.
Chart paper cut by the sheet and Bengali-medium notebooks sold by the dozen
Chart paper is cut for a school project, a quarter of a sheet here and a half there, and the Bengali-medium notebooks come by the dozen and go out one at a time. The register and the shelf part ways. At the week's end nobody can say how much of the chart paper stack went, or which dozen of notebooks was opened.
New copies and second-hand copies of the same book sit on one shelf
A child whose older sibling used the book last year wants a second-hand copy at a lower price. The new copy and the old copy look alike to a stranger, and the price in your head depends on the cover. When the helper sells a second-hand copy at the new price, nobody notices until the parent complains.
From the class list on the teacher's slip to the dozen of notebooks opened and sold singly
The teacher's pencilled slip is typed once, and the bill is ready before the bus leaves
Take the slip, bill each item with its own rate, and the total is on the screen while the teacher is still at the counter. The bill goes to his phone, so the school has a written record, and the shop does not have to keep the slip. The bus back to the villages leaves on the hour, and a teacher who misses it waits half the afternoon in the lane with a box of books at her feet.
At the term's end, the two editions' counts stand side by side
At the end of the term, the English and the Bengali counts of one class book stand side by side. The one with more left is the edition fewer families took, so next term's order for it is smaller, and the shelf is not half Bengali by habit.
The dozen opened for one notebook is written down, not remembered
Keep the notebook as an item by the piece and by the dozen. When you open a dozen to sell one, note it on the count. The register and the shelf then agree on the number of loose notebooks, and the next order is made to what is on the shelf.
Hill roads and tea villages: where a Tripura bookshop's customers walk in from
Bookshops in Tripura serve students who walk in from hill roads and farm villages. Here are two districts, and what their sites say.
- West Tripura's district site says cane and bamboo chairs, tables, mats, hats and bags are exported, and handloom goods are sold at the Purbasha government emporium.
- In Dhalai district, 76% of workers depend on agriculture; the district site names poor marketing facilities as a reason for backwardness, though NH 44 connects it.
Questions Tripura stationery and book shops ask
Used books are bought back on the last day of term, a pile at once. Can I enter them quickly?
Enter each title once as a used item and add the day's copies to its count in one go. Each later sale takes one copy off, so the pile on the floor becomes a count on the phone by evening.
A parent from a Bengali-medium school asks which titles her child bought last June. Where do I look?
Open the first days of last June in the sales and find the school's books. The lines show which titles were taken, so you tell her the list from the bills and not from your memory.
The year ends and Bengali-medium books are left over. Which classes' books should I order less of?
Open the counts of the Bengali-medium class books. The classes with many left are the ones to order less of, and the term's reports show how fast each class's books went.
A government-backed book fair and free textbooks: what Tripura reads
Tripura's Chief Minister, opening the 44th Agartala Book Fair, said Tripura is perhaps the only state where the government directly patronises its book fair. A fair backed in that way is a week when books are in many hands, and a bookseller can plan for it.
In 2020 Tripura's education minister announced free NCERT-translated textbooks for about 14,000 students in 73 private Bengali-medium schools, classes I to VIII, costing about Rs 60 lakh. It is a reminder that what a class needs can change when the state decides.