Abstract
Weekly markets or ‘hafta bazaars’ are an important part of India’s cultural and traditional milieu. These informal markets are held once a week at a particular place, within varying time slots, and cater to a diverse spectrum of consumers. Although these markets are important from both an economic and a cultural point of view, they have not been documented properly. A team of researchers has attempted to comprehensively document Delhi’s weekly markets by mapping their locations, products sold and the days and timings at which they are held. This article offers a geographical overview of these markets through the creation of an innovative web portal—the first such attempt to showcase and digitise these invincible economic hubs on a single platform. Lessons from this exercise could pave the way for future research to unearth the administrative and economic models that underpin the efficient and sustainable functioning of the hafta bazaars.
Introduction
The phenomenon of weekly markets or hafta bazaars (Hindi, ‘hafta’: week, ‘bazaar’: market) is centuries old in India (Hashmi, 2007). Almost every Indian village has had permanent and weekly markets (Hashmi, 2007), in addition to others organised annually (like the Pushkar cattle fair) or during festivals. In their earliest form, these markets took the form of a ‘haat’, ‘tehbazaari’, or ‘saaptahik bazaar’, primarily to sell agricultural produce and articles of daily use. The purpose of weekly bazaars has been to provide farmers and manufacturers a platform to sell their products directly to consumers at fair prices, without the involvement of middlemen and wholesalers.
The origin of these markets lies in geographical diversity enabling unique regional produce, which created the need for goods to be exchanged. A site would be earmarked where people could exchange their products for other goods or for money. According to Machiraju (2009), micro-markets exist wherever a group of people or community exists, in order to periodically meet their requirements in a cost-effective manner. The weekly market is a traditional style of retailing where on a particular weekday, traders display their commodities in a makeshift arrangement. While many of these markets are authorised by the state municipal authorities against payment of a fixed amount, others continue to operate without any proper approval or record. (Chowdhary, 2017; Mohan & Sekhani, 2017).
The vendors who participate in local weekly markets have been identified as street vendors under Clause 2(l) of the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014. This act categorically defines a ‘street vendor’ as a person engaged in the vending of articles, goods, wares, food items or merchandise of everyday use, or a person who offers services to the general public on a street, lane, sidewalk, footpath, pavement, public park or any other public place or private area, from a temporary built-up structure or by moving from place to place. The act includes hawkers, peddlers, squatters and other synonymous terms which may be local or region specific. Accordingly, vendors in local weekly markets are a subset of street vendors who regularly come together to provide market services at a particular place and time. Delhi has about three lakh street vendors, even though the official figure of ‘legal’ vendors according to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) is roughly around 1.25 lakh (Sankrit, 2015).
Weekly markets form an informal market segment and ‘facilitate the informal and formal economy not merely in terms of traditional concerns of labor and consumption, but also with regard to cultural and spatial contingencies’ (Evers & Seale, 2018). While these bazaars continue to operate in fundamentally the same way, the vendors face many liabilities that resemble the struggles of urban lower and middle class workers engaged in the informal sector, which sustains the rising population in the economy. Much has changed in the hafta bazaars today—from the wares that are sold to the customers who shop there; yet the social and cultural dynamics of these markets should be preserved and documented (Hashmi, 2007). Usually, these markets are organised on pavements. Commodities sold range from small, everyday objects to vegetables, garments, toys and small electrical gadgets. The cost of most goods is lower than one would find in established outlets or malls.
Hafta Bazaars of Delhi: An Overview
The tradition of markets in Delhi has a long history. Chandni Chowk Bazaar, Meena Bazaar, Sadar Bazaar and Sabzi Mandi are some of Delhi’s historical market centres for various products. During the Mughal era, these weekly markets were run by travelling salesmen who would set up shops at new locations every day; they would come back to each location once a week (Yadav & Bhaduri, 2019). Each travelling merchant catered to a fixed set of six or seven villages within the then environs of Delhi. With urbanisation and industrialisation, other day-dependent centres emerged in different locations of Delhi, where vendors came together and sold their products on particular days. These came to be known as hafta bazaars and were popularly named after the day they were set up [i.e. Budhbazaar (budh is Wednesday in Hindi), Shukrabazaar (shukra is Friday in Hindi)]. Despite being economic hubs, given their informal nature, these hafta bazaars have not been recognised as socio-economic institutions by the country’s lawmakers.
Delhi has long been a centre for political and economic activities and has seen a constant influx of migrants from other Indian states in search of livelihood. This contributed to its informal economy and enabled the hafta bazaar tradition, where migrants serve as both buyers and sellers. These markets are characterised by cheaper products, family-run shops and high competition. They offer one-stop shopping, greater choice and convenience for customers (NCERT, 2019). This has significantly increased people’s access to goods that were earlier only available in big market centres. Buyers and sellers converge in these markets periodically to acquire and/or dispose locally produced and acquired goods and services, exchange information with friends, relatives and strangers, as well as engage in recreational activities (Tamaskar, 1986).
Data Sets and Methodology
The exploration and recording of hafta bazaars in Delhi was not easy; there was no proper documentation of these markets in a centralised database. There are very few studies that have looked at these informal markets, none of which include a detailed account of Delhi’s hafta bazaars. Moreover, these markets are prone to shifting locations and even abruptly closing down.
Given these constraints, to prepare a comprehensive list of weekly markets in Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR) area, we first collated data about these markets from available literature, especially research papers and news articles. We also collected information from people known to us, who live in Delhi and frequent these markets. For this, we developed a questionnaire with open-ended questions such as ‘Do you know any weekly market in your area? Do you visit them?’ Through this process, we got locations, days and timings of a few markets. We then began mapping markets using Google My Maps. To make the data-gathering process more rigorous, we visited the markets over a period of time. We talked to vendors and gathered information on which weekly markets they visited on different days. For gathering data on the variety of products sold in the market, and on administration and governance, we conducted informal, open-ended interviews with vendors, the pradhan (market headman) and with social organisations of street vendors like the National Association of Street Vendors of India (NASVI) and the Saptahik Bazaar Welfare Association. Through this combined method of citizen science and interviews, we were able to create a detailed list of more than 250 hafta bazaars. The mapping exercise continues, and the plan is to scale it to an all-India level.
Initially, the mapping process was carried out on My Google Maps, and the locations of the different bazaars were marked. We then used Mapbox API to render data contained in Mapbox and hosted a GeoJSON file as a layer on our map. The GeoJSON file is a database table with each row containing data on the features of the hafta bazaars, their location and geographic information. The Mapbox data layer supports the automatic rendering of the location data and provides clickable overlays that display descriptions of these bazaars. The weekly market map can be viewed on the online portal.
Online Portal for the Documentation and Mapping of Weekly Markets: Rationale
We have attempted to create a platform where information about Delhi’s various weekly markets can be found. The interactive portal (
We started the documentation and mapping of the hafta bazaars with two primary objectives: The first was to create a public portal which contained information about their timings, products sold and locative maps for use by people living in Delhi. This would help both consumers as well as vendors. The second objective was to create a data set which can be used to study various facets of these markets from the perspective of economy, urbanisation and policy.
Data Analysis and Discussion
The documentation of Delhi’s weekly markets has opened up avenues for future research. We have, so far, documented more than 250 hafta bazaars in Delhi and NCR area (Figure 1). Delhi is divided into 11 administrative districts. We found that while hafta bazaars are quite popular across the city, their numbers vary in different areas. This number is closely related to semi-urban or urban areas, and these markets prominently cater to middle- and lower-income groups. The spatial distribution of weekly markets in Delhi and NCR suggests that the lowest number of markets is in central Delhi, including ‘Lutyens’ Delhi’ and the cantonment area. The frequency analysis of these markets suggests that the number of markets also varies according to the day when these markets are held. A higher number of markets are held in the early days of the week than on Sunday, which has the least number of markets (Figure 2). Many hafta bazaars primarily originated close to factories and warehouses of suppliers to directly sell the products from these setups.
Most hafta bazaars operate using stalls to sell products in residential areas, which makes them stationary. Although some permanent shop-owners participate in the bazaars, there are also several mobile vendors who migrate to different bazaars in the same week. Our findings indicate that although informal, these weekly markets operate on the basis of a complex model, as illustrated in Figure 3, involving several consumer parameters and vendor accessibility.
Governance and Administration
The administration of hafta bazaars is no less complex. There is a local electoral body and a local government authority that play a major role in their administrative affairs Ł and are actively involved in their registration and regulation. There is a linear economic functioning, where suppliers supply products to vendors and retailers in the markets, who then sell them to consumers in exchange for money or kind. We have created a basic model of the dynamics of hafta bazaars which could pave the way for a detailed understanding of their economic functioning, migratory patterns of vendors, consumer satisfaction and administrative difficulties, and could help explore the different setups in which hafta bazaars operate (Figure 3).
Consumers and Buyers
Based on the data collected, the findings of the study suggest that such markets in cities like Delhi, NCR, fulfil several needs of the local public. The primary reasons for their high uptake among customers include their timings of operation and the availability of a wide range of cheap and economical products, such as fresh vegetables, daily use items, local and homemade products, all in one place. Further, the vendors in these markets are either self-employed businessmen, hawkers or peddlers who sell products as per the demand of the local public. In some instances, the products depend on the factories that they are located in proximity to.
Diversity of Products
Hafta bazaars are known for their diversity of products, including clothes, spices, toys, slippers, belts, plastic products, stationery, bags, bedsheets and electric appliances. People also use these markets to buy fresh vegetables and fruits and products and household products such as grinder stones which are rarely available in regular shops or malls. These markets are localised according to the area, that is they have the flexibility to sell products that are most in demand from a particular community. Often these products, such as fruits and vegetables, are seasonal. Hafta bazaars also sell products used for rituals during festivals. These markets are also popular centres for ready-to-eat products such as Chinese and Indian fast food.
Historicity and Tourism Potential
Most weekly markets in Delhi are heterogeneous in terms of products although some sell only one type of item, such as clothes or vegetables. Some weekly markets have become famous for specific products, such as the Sunday Darya Ganj books market; others for having been originated by a particular community, like the Mahila Bazaar (a women vendors’ market). We are in the process of selecting about 50 markets, which could be utilised for their tourism potential—for example, a hafta bazaar walking tour.
Conclusions
Hafta bazaar is a term that describes a particular segment of the that operates on a given day of the week, at a certain place. While originally meant to cater to the needs of low-income sections of society, today these bazaars are equally popular across all segments of the population. No longer limited to a few commodities, they offer a variety of household goods, organic products, textiles, stationery, home decorative items, fruit and vegetables and other necessities for regular use. However, these temporary markets, which are a vital part of the urban socio-economic fabric, are facing a set of challenges. These include security concerns, corrupt administrative institutions that govern the registration of stalls, and exploitation through the imposition of illegal tariffs on sales, among others. A sustainable model needs to be developed and implemented for the long-term survival of this market system, as it provides livelihoods to people and contributes to the economy. The concept of the hafta bazaar, a marketplace which reflects the struggles of the urban poor and people engaged in the informal economy for generations, needs to be encouraged. Ggovernment support must be provided for the sustainable survival of this vital sector of the economy. This first online portal documenting Delhi’s weekly markets is envisioned as a first step towards the complete documentation of India’s urban and rural weekly markets as a citizen science project. We have focussed on the migration patterns of vendors, selected interesting markets for their tourism potential and surveyed vendors and consumers for a better understanding of the functioning of these hafta bazaars. Given how underreported this area of research is, this work could pave the way for further work on India’s weekly markets, their sustainability and dynamic nature.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We are thankful to the Director, CIC, for letting us continue with the project. We have not received any extramural grant for this project.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.