Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, May 05, 2008
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Online edition of India's National Newspaper Monday, May 05, 2008 ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version |
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Tamil Nadu
Chinraj in his grocery shop at Kottamettupatti at Omalur block in Salem. — Krishnan Chinraj has inherited his father’s grocery shop, the sole major retail outlet in the remote Kottamettupatti village in Omalur block in Salem district, which has a strong labour population. This 30-year-old youth who studied up to Standard 10 has been married to Kavitha, a Plus Two qualifier. Both run the shop, Kannan Grocery Stores, which sells retail items from salt to rice and soap to shampoo. They have been in this business for the past 8 years. They source their goods in bulk from the wholesale market at Sevvapet in Salem once in a month and sell them in retail in tiny pockets containing meagre quantities with the price ranging from 25 paise to Rs. 30. “Our villagers, a majority of them labourers such as construction workers and farm workers, buy the essential provisions that meet the day’s needs,” says Chinraj. For him the brisker the sale, harder the labour is. “I cannot say no to any one asking small quantities of grocery items. They can afford to buy only small quantities. Even if it is one spoon of chilli powder, selling at 25 paise, I have to give it in a tiny pocket folded in old newspapers. It eats into my energy enormously,” he points out. The village labourers buy these provisions when they return from day’s hard labour after dusk. But Chinraj does not mind to sweat it out if it fetches a good profit. A year back, his shop sold goods to the value of Rs. 40,000 a month. Now it has fallen to a mere Rs. 27,000. A sharp fall of 40 per cent in the sale has also created a deep burrow in his earnings. He has no qualms to blame it on the increasing prices of essential commodities and the diminishing purchasing power of the labour class on whom his livelihood depends. Medium quality rice costs Rs. 21 today from the last year’s Rs. 12 while the groundnut oil, which the villagers prefer for their cooking, now costs Rs. 90 a kg. against the last year’s Rs. 65. Various varieties of grams also record 30 per cent increase forcing the poor and downtrodden to reduce their purchases to suit their wages, which remain the same as it was some 5 years back. Thus the small time grocery-seller in a non-descript village too suffers from the cascading effect of the spiralling prices, which encompasses all and sparring none.
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