Discontent is running high among the traders and artisans who have pitched stalls in the much-touted Himanya Saras Mela, now going on at Parade Ground in Dehradun, as the organisers have failed to allot to each of them a separate shop. There are many among the traders who say that two of them are managing things from a single shop. The accommodation being provided to them is not satisfactory too, as they say that many of them are huddling together in a single room given to them. Besides, the volume of sale being abysmally low, the traders and artisans who have come from across the country with their unique merchandise appear to be a depressed lot.
Many of them this correspondent talked to sounded resentful on count of poorly managed accommodation facilities. “We, five or six, are crowding together in a single room of a hotel. This is what we did not expect,” said a trader Aman Singh from Chattisgarh.
Another from Madhya Pradesh said very few people are thronging the mela. “We wonder why the number is so low. And most of those who come are opting for window shopping. Most of the goods we have bought remain unsold,” he grumbled.
Some who are from the rural areas of the state said they were happy with the opportunity the State Government has given them to showcase their handicrafts and sell them. “However, the scene is dismal with the number of takers being very low,” one of them, a member of a self-help group, said. They further said that if the trend does not reverse for the better, they would incur a huge loss, something they can hardly afford, given their limited resources.
One Ravindra Singh said that he had kept products worth around one lakh with the hope of earning profit. “But over the past eight days, I have been able to sell just a quarter of them. The profit I have earned is a paltry `2000.
There is hardly any possibility that things would look up in the few days left of the mela,” he said.
Karnprayag resident Rinki Kanderi, who has put up a stall, said she was in difficulty being forced to share a single room with six other women. “Besides, the things we, the rural women, have brought here for sale are getting very few buyers. We are in deep trouble as the money we have spent is unlikely to be returned, not to speak of profit,” she said.
Notably, over 100 self- help groups operating in the rural areas of the state and the same number from across the country have pitched around 200 stalls. A number of states like Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana, Maharashtra, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar are being represented through their stalls aside from Uttarakhand. In addition, groups connected with Uttarakhand Rural Development Committee have also put up their stalls in the Saras Mela.