A group of daily labourers stand on a narrow lane at the crowded wholesale market in Lalapet on a balmy afternoon. They are waiting for their plate of crispy vada dipped in dollops of curd and garnished by slices of tomato and coriander leaves at this small eatery.
Rajendra is a busy man as he serves the vada in steel plates to head loaders and then scribbles numbers in a small note book kept on top of the steel rack. A plate of vada costs Rs. 20 while the combination of vada and curd cost Rs. 25. On any normal day, one has to squeeze to get into the wholesale shopping complex, but these are unusual times. “I have been here for the last 20 years and I know most of my customers by name. If they don’t have money to pay, they can pay me later. But I can not accept Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 notes,” Rajendra says.
Rajendra just makes a note of cost of each plate in a book and the customers walk away after having a delicious meal. Trust is the key word in this hub of wholesale market in the town.
A head loader Ravi, rues that his daily earnings have come down drastically. “I usually get Rs. 600 to Rs. 1,000 daily but now I get only Rs. 500,” he says. The narrow lane leads to a cluster of wholesale shops. Koteswara Rao, a wholesale trader dealing in pulses, says he has been feeling the pinch of the sudden decision to scrap Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 notes.
“I was selling 100 bags of pulses on an average daily but now, I hardly sell about 20 bags. The dealers have also stopped accepting Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 notes since Tuesday. The prices of pulses too are going down,” he says.
With the big notes out of legal tender, the wholesale business in Lalapet area has taken a hit. Wholesale traders say very few customers have turned up to buy goods in bulk during the last week. Most of them do not have access to the electronic mode of accepting debit or credit cards on Point of Sale (PoS) platforms and rely on traditional mode of payment.
“The sudden decision to scrap Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 have struck a deathblow to small traders. The daily turnover wholesale business in the town is about Rs. 450 to Rs. 500 crore. We urge the State government to allow the traders to deposit the notes entered in books in the current account of banks,” president of Indian Chamber of Commerce, Atukuri Anjaneyulu told The Hindu on Wednesday.
