Business already hit by Covid, notorious market tag hurts our reputation: Traders at Palika Bazaar

On Saturday, the market is bustling with shoppers, mostly young, looking for earphones, clothes or shoes.

“They don’t seem to have surveyed the bazaar or visited it before making the list. Business is already poor, and a listing like this makes a difference to the market’s reputation,” said Mahesh Jaitley, vice president of the Palika Bazaar Association.

The description along with the USTR listing said, “This underground market in Delhi is seemingly well-known for the trade of counterfeit products, such as mobile accessories, cosmetics, watches, and eyewear. Many shoppers are reportedly students and other young people who want trendy products at cheap prices. The market is also a popular destination for tourists.”

A walk through the bazaar shows a majority of the stores sell garments. These are interspersed with a few stores selling electronic goods like earphones, hairdryers and straighteners. A few tattoo studios, stores selling leather goods, toys, and handicraft stores are scattered across the bazaar. A few stores selling food cannot cook at the premises, but bring food from outside for sale.

Since the bazaar was set up in 1978, owners have changed their wares with changing times, said Jaitley, who runs an electronic goods store. “The bazaar started out with many handicraft shops. Owners then switched to selling electronic goods, and then video and audio cassettes when they became popular. With the internet and the online shopping having picked up, most stores sell ready-made garments now,” he said. The underground market has around 400 stores spread over 3 acres, and predates all the malls in the city, he added. There are stores that advertise cameras on their name boards, but sell apparel, while denim and headphones sit side by side at some.

When the bazaar came up, it was unique, said Krishan Arora, who has been running a garment store for 35 years. “There’s a park above and a bazaar underground, and it was centrally air-conditioned, which was a big deal then. It became a place that tourists frequented and we used to rely on tourists for business,” Arora said. Now, the bazaar cannot keep up with the malls that have sprouted in the city, Jaitley added. Besides, Covid has dealt a blow to visits from tourists.

Arora is among a few shop owners at the market who own factories that manufacture the garments they sell. His factory is located in Loni. “Surplus stock is bought from showrooms for sale here. Some owners also purchase in bulk from factories at Panipat,” Jaitley said.

L R Monga, who now runs a garment store, was among the first to move to the bazaar in 1978. A total of 78 shop owners were shifted from Panchkuian Road to the bazaar when their existing shops, along with some in Janpath and Yusuf Sarai, were to be vacated for road widening, he said. “I sold lights and lamp-shades then. But tourists wouldn’t buy such bulky things. So, I switched to garments. I used to pay Rs 2000 as maintenance in 1992. I now pay Rs 9500 to the NDMC,” he said.

Rajkumar Sharma, who was also allotted a store at the bazaar on relocating from Panchkuian Road, said that most of the cheap items that the bazaar had become popular for, like VCRs, cassettes, and CDs, were no longer in use.

Rajat, the proprietor of the only book store at the bazaar, Rajiv Book House, said, “Nearly 95% of the stores here used to sell electronics. They have all switched to clothes now.” The book store was one among three at the market, till the other two shut.

“The amount paid as maintenance increases by around 10% every two years. The amount also varies depending on the area of the store and whether it has changed hands from the original allottee,” he said.