Page 38 - Issue 01

medical clinics and shops, although just for the had to face the problem of credit then as, before
limited period of 6 hours. This selective allowance the lockdown, sellers in the mandi gave them a
for shops to function actually made these small time window to sell their products and pay the
vendors, in a sense, a bit jealous and they started price within 10 days. They couldn’t avail this
complaining about the guidelines of the mechanism of deferred payments now and had
government. Meanwhile, many of them started there are a few policies that are still quite helpful
making a shift towards other kinds of professions to them for their survival but the point to note
like selling coal, etc. When the shops were finally here is that they, in no way, should be construed as
announced to open, the prices of every necessary any favor to them by the government. Lastly, it has
good and those of staple foods started to rise been easily noticeable to me that, like most of us,
steeply due to high demand and it became very they are also very optimistic people and live with
difficult for the local shops to completely meet the hope that the vaccine will arrive as early as
this high demand. Many of them were selling their possible and reach everyone across the society as
items from their home itself, but the sale was half they have seen with other vaccines like Polio
or less than half of what they used to sell in the vaccine in the past. In this article, I have tried to
normal times. When others came to know about give a comprehensive overview of how the
this selling-from- home option, they also started pandemic has radically transformed the lives of
to think differently and went on to sell their the common people around us who work in the
products by going to different localities on cycles informal sector and are worst hurt by the
or motorcycles. Many of the sellers started to use pandemic. This article still leaves out certain issues
sanitizer very frequently and wore gloves which were personal to the people studied and
although they had never heard of sanitizer before. hence, they didn’t want to discuss with me but are
Some of them even started accepting online still important in addressing the concerns the
payments through Google Pay, PhonePe, etc. So, pandemic has raised about the situation of the
one positive thing that came out of this lockdown daily wage-earners of our nation. I hope any policy
was their getting to know about how to use these that is framed in the future to mitigate the adverse
payment methods which helped make their effects of the pandemic takes into account the
business digital to some extent. However, selling struggle of these people and hence, provides the
on bikes and cycles increased their input costs by economy with a more balanced version of
quite an amount, and hence, their profit margin development.
decreased. Since, they already earn a very
moderate amount of income (about ₹200-250/day, Sagar Kumar is a student of M.Sc. 2020-22 batch.
on an average), this further lowered it to ₹150 or
less owing to lesser sales and higher input costs.

The case with vegetable hawkers was different
because before the lockdown they had to travel
around 5 km to get the vegetables from the mandi,
but as the mandi is a highly crowded space, the
police had to strictly stop all activity over there.
So, now they had to travel far away from the local
wholesale market - around 25 km per day to
procure the vegetables for selling. They had to
leave their homes daily around 4 a.m. as the
market stayed open only from 4-6 a.m. They also

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