Nehrunagar: Ahmedabad’s Fashion Street

The attractive street market of nehrunagar is visited by hundreds of shopaholics every day. This market is stretched from Nehrunagar circle to the statue of Rani Lakshmi Bai. It is a hub for street Sellers who set their shops on the footpaths, selling readymade clothes. The sellers set up their business everyday, starting from 4.00pm. It takes them nearly an hour for the setup. They end their day at 11:00 pm. This stretch of Nehrunagar works as an unstructured market. As per Manwani, the NGO has made a new list naming around 380 individuals who come to Nehrunagar daily to earn their livelihood. The Nehrunagar cloth market serves as the sole source of earning for many families. The sellers are into the business since 15 years. Most of the sellers are coming from the nearby villages for their business. The sellers buy their stock of goods from Mumbai, Jaipur and from old Ahmedabad. As it is the fashion street of Ahmedabad the sellers keep on changing the style and material of their readymade cloths according to the trends of the market, occasions and festivals. For an instance, as the festivals are approaching, readymade clothes will switch accordingly. In winter and monsoon they prefer their clothes according to those seasons. The market runs down on the starting days of the week. Whereas weekends add as the bonus to their daily earnings. Moreover on the days of New Year or festivals; market become very profitable for the sellers.

The sellers share a strong relation internally. They help each other at the time of need. For instance when we talked to one of the seller named Shardaben told us that, if the garment demanded is not available on their stall they will tell their customer they can get demanded garment from next seller. Moreover in the rainy season seller make sure that their temporary roof will cover their stall as well as some area of their neighbour’s stall. Moreover they have their own place where they daily put their stall so there is no fighting for the place of the stall. Any new seller can also come there and start their stall without any problems. There are some group of seller who are going to the wholesale market together to buy goods so they can get any discount in price and cost of transportation get reduced.

We observe that Some of the sellers are not at all aware about the technology and the remaining one's who are aware don’t know how to use it, they want to learn the technology and want to use it in their business. And remaining sellers are rigid towards the technology advancement. while interviewing some of the sellers, we got to know about their views on demonetisation, they said that still they all are not so connected with technology, some of them suggested that they want to learn the methods of digital payments and to organise some sort of seminar which will give them idea and by this they can increase their sales.

The sellers are need to be alert about their stock because during the peak hours ,market become crowded they have to make sure that in that crowd no one steal their product. The most amusing thing is how they communicate with their customer in their local Gujarati language, it feels very warm and welcoming. The level of patience which they showed while dealing with their customers is something we should learn from. They understand the demand of the customer and try to deal with it in very calm and compose manner.

Clothes are the USP of this market, but to complement them there are various other stalls offering accessories, footwear and eateries to give the customers a perfect blend of street shopping. There are also small children who sells things like balloons or help their parents in the stalls

According to the traffic police, more traffic is observed during 7:00 to 8:30 as it the peak time, sometimes access of traffic creates a chaos in the market and more chances of accident can occur. And because of the traffic issue the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) had taken the decision to relocate the market to Gurjari Bazar at river front (east).

Nehrunagar become economic back bone to many people in the Ahmedabad and its nearby villages.