At one of the oldest manufacturers of flags in Old Delhi’s Sadar Bazar, Raja Ansari, owner of Bharat Handloom Cloth House, sits pondering over his monthly accounts book. “In over half a century, we haven’t seen such a lull in business before Republic Day,” says Ansari. Wholesalers and traders in Delhi-NCR share that their regular customers aren’t turning up to buy flags and other tricoloured decorative items even though R-Day is around the corner.
“Because of the pandemic, last Independence Day also our business was hit, but we continued to pay our employees out of our pocket hoping that Republic Day will help us revive our business. Usually we would make around 3 lakh flags for Republic Day, but so far we have barely sold 2000 flags,” adds Ansari.
Rajendra Singh, a Dwarka-based flag seller, shares a similar sentiment. “Until 2019, we usually made 200 flags every day. We are right now barely making 25 to 30 flags. Earlier large flags would be in demand at places such as big campuses; but most public events aren’t happening this year,” rues Singh.
Though schools have reopened for class 10 and 12, most of the institutions do not plan to hold events wherein all the students will be required to be present at the same time on their premises, to follow Covid-19 protocols. Traders say that this means that R-Day celebrations in schools will also not be a big affair. Some say the sad bit is that demand for both cloth and paper flags has diminished this time.
“As far as I know there are no events in schools, so there are no bulk orders for flags, unlike previous years. Also, most corporates are choosing to have low-key virtual celebrations for R-Day, which is another reason for low sales. Most celebrations have moved online, and hence even orders for paper flags is less; yeh toh pehle lakhon bikte the,” says Vikram Singh, a trader in Sadar Bazar.
Even decorative items such as badges, scarves, ribbons, and caps in tricolour theme are not selling that well according to shopkeepers. Mahendra Arora, another manufacturer of flags in Sadar, says, “We keep an assortment of tricolour theme items, but since there won’t be many public events, inki demand nahi hai. People are avoiding meeting in large gatherings, so tricolour caps, ribbons log khareed nahi rahe. So I have had to stop their bulk production because jo do-chaar bik rahe hain woh to purane stock me se hi nikal aate hain. We are not investing in inventory since most customers haven’t placed orders yet.”
Author tweets @bhagat_mallika
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