To Market To Market

The tribal economy even today revolves around the weekly market or Haat. There is one every twenty kilometers or so where everything related to agriculture, animal husbandry and household needs are traded.These trading centres are so important to the tribals and yet they have not been developed to provide any facilities to the tribals who are its life blood. The traders in these centres who have got rich by continuously exploiting the tribals and short changing them, have on the other hand built big buildings for themselves as in the picture below -

This is the Haat in Chhaktala village on the Gujarat border early in the morning when the small peripatetic traders have just set up their temporary stalls and the tribals are still on their way. We were going to Vakner village which is about twenty kilometers away in a jeep and so had reached early. There is a lot of talk on the part of the government to develop rural business hubs which will procure the agricultural produce of the tribals at fair prices and then process them there so as to provide some supplementary income but nothing has been done on the ground.

The Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath has carried out many campaigns to bring fairness in the trade being conducted in these Haats by complaining about the short changing and also the exorbitant interest rates that are charged when the tribals buy things on credit. But after some time these campaigns invariably tend to flag in the face of administrative apathy. The market remains beyond the control of the tribals and so they continue to flounder in poverty.