Pondy Bazaar

Geohistory of Pondy Bazaar:

Chennai, the capital city of Tamil Nadu, a few centuries ago, was nothing more than a few fishing hamlets and villages with port facilities that existed from the time of the Pallava reign. Soon after the commencement of British trade in India, Madras, or Madrasapatnam as it was called, became important for trade with East and South East Asian countries like Indonesia and Malaysia primarily because of its location on the South-Eastern coast of India. Over the years, these small villages and temple localities were brought under the British rule as a town and later became a city. 

In the early 1920s, the boundary of Chennai which had till then included the localities of Mylapore, Triplicane, Washermanpet, Purasaivalkam, Egmore, Nungambakkam, Teynampet and Parry’s Corner expanded to include the villages of Mambalam, and Saidapet which till then were part of the Chinglepet District. This expansion to the west (for Chennai’s eastern boundary was fixed by the Bay of Bengal) while making the city larger also moved its centre to the west. The Long Tank that had till then formed the Western boundary of the city was drained during the expansion for the development of primarily residential localities of Thyagaraya Nagar, Mambalam and Saidapet.

A map of Chennai in 1922 prior to the inclusion of Mambalam, Saidapet and other neighbouring villages into the city. 

Pondy Bazaar, T. Nagar:

Much like the twelve roads that lead away from the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, half a dozen major roads branch from the Panagal Park, T. Nagar, in Chennai. This is not to say that T. Nagar is anything like the 8th Arrondissement in Paris. For one, it does not see as many tourists on a daily basis as the Arc de Triomphe nor does it symbolise the sacrifice made by the Unknown Soldier as is the case in Paris. However, just as the Champs Élysées branches out from the Arc de Triomphe so does the Thyagaraya Road, a stretch of which is popularly called Pondy Bazaar initially named Soundarapandian Bazaar after the Justice Party politician W. P. A. Soundarapandian Nadar, from the Panagal Park. 

Thyagaraya Nagar was named after the Justice party leader Sir P. Theagaraya Chetty  and a park developed which was named after the then Chief Minister, Raja of Panagal, as Panagal Park. However, the locality did not remain the quiet residential locality that had been envisaged by the planners. Commercial shops and outlets began to spring up in this area primarily along the Thyagaraya Road in the stretch that is now known as Pondy Bazaar.     

Well connected to the rest of the city by train, bus and other means of transport, this stretch – Pondy Bazaar – has been and continues to be a popular shopping destination for all of one’s needs and wants in Chennai. This highly commercialised area houses hundreds of shops of varying sizes, selling a wide-range goods – from the cheapest quality to the high-end brands – within a few metres of each other. One can find many shops dealing in the same line of merchandise and shops selling complementary products and services all located quite close to each other, thus, providing the customer with something close to a one stop shop. One such case would be with respect to clothing; there are shops selling saris or dress materials, some others dealing in others in related items such as blouse material or petticoats with tailoring facilities and others in accessories such as jewellery, footwear and bags. Thus, one’s clothing and complementary needs are taken care of. Pondy Bazaar is, in that sense, something like a megastore with everything under its roof.

In addition to the commercial outlets, there are also platform shops selling cheap jewellery, toys, bags, plastic ware, books, footwear and clothes. These platform shops can be found side by side the internationally and nationally branded outlets and local footwear and apparel shops selling cheaper versions of the branded products sold in these air-conditioned outlets. These platform shops are most famous among college students and young professionals looking for wide variety at minimum cost to them.

Moreover, the owners of these platform shops are all a part of the T. Nagar Traders’ Association and elect their office bearers. With hopes of educating their children and making them politically active citizens, all members of this Union send their children to schools and support them in their higher studies. One such platform owner said, “All Union members send their children to school and educate them. After all, we don’t want them to end up like ourselves...working on the streets. One of my nieces is now working in a software company, and my son is doing his Plus-2 (12^th Standard in school). He wants to do engineering at Anna University and is working hard towards getting a State rank.”

Pondy Bazaar, in the last decade, has seen tremendous growth in the number of commercial outlets and there has been a significant increase in the procurement of goods from other parts of India as well. This change has taken place in the post-liberalisation context of India with geographically distant regions getting increasingly integrated with not just other regions of the country but also with the rest of the world. 

However, while the platform shops in Pondy Bazaar deal in pretty much uniform goods, the character of the platform shops on either side of the road is different from the other. While the platform shops on the Southern side of the road tend to be more aggressive in marketing and selling their products, the ones on the opposite side are not that pro-active. That is not to say that they do not sell goods of the same quality as the ones on the side opposite to them. Consequently, one can see that even the platform on the Southern side is used more by the shoppers rather than the one on the Northern side. One reason for this could be that shops – most of them are small – are aplenty on the Southern side while the opposite end hosts bigger shops like Naidu Hall and Levi’s.

The flower sellers and garland makers on the one hand prefer to buy their flowers individually from the Koyambedu flower market in the morning before they set up shop at 6 a.m. While they purchase their flowers from the same place, their purchases are made separately at the rates fixed in the wholesale market and there is no opportunity to bargain for a discount. There is, thus, no occasion for the garland sellers to operate as a united group and exert their power to avail of agglomeration economies. Similarly with platform-shop owners dealing in cheap jewellery, the procurement is done from one shop within Chennai but each shop-keeper places a separate order for their shop. The method used by those who sell footwear on the platforms is quite different from the one just explained; these shop-owners who procure their goods from Bombay, come together as a group and make a single order comprising of all their orders, and on arrival of the goods, separate it on the basis of the quantity ordered. Thus, these shop-keepers are able to reduce the cost on transportation by ordering as a single group rather than individually.    

While some of these platform shop-keepers reside in central Chennai, many of them travel from as far as Tambaram and Gummidipoondi on a daily basis to open shop taking advantage of the lower rental rates there. They feel that travelling to and from the city every day for work is better than setting up shop in their area of residences for T. Nagar being a central locality is more accessible to customers. They can in and indirectly more revenue. Land prices have gone up in T. Nagar, especially near Pondy Bazaar, with the mushrooming of shops on an almost fortnightly, if not weekly, basis. There is perpetually at least one shop getting renovated or rebuilt at any point in time in Pondy Bazaar. Faced with intense competition, not only with each other, but also with hypermarkets such as Big Bazaar, these shopkeepers try to find innovative methods to face the competition. Discount sales have become a regular feature today not only during festive season but also in the name of clearance sales, annual sales, etc. This tactic is one used by most big shops to attract new customers and retain regulars. Pondy bazaar, in the last couple of decades, has seen an increase in the number of multi-storeyed stores which include Naidu Hall, Rathna Stores, Levi’s, Sri Krishna Stores, Wranglers, Instore, Diva and Nalli. 

While I have already described two types of shop-keepers – the platform shop-keepers and the flower-shop owners) in Pondy Bazaar, I shall describe two kinds of salesmen next. One can find a sizable number of salespersons, predominantly male, selling, primarily, musical instruments such as dholaks and, nowadays, toy guitars. These salespersons are largely North or North-Eastern Indians who have migrated to Chennai in the hopes of earning a livelihood to support their families back home. They sell these goods either on behalf of their employer or on their own. Selling their wares on the move is a more fruitful alternative to putting up a stall or shop on a platform waiting for consumers to come one’s way and buy it from oneself. Their major buyers are foreigners who come to India and, more specifically, to Pondy Bazaar, and Non-Resident Indians. 

Pondy Bazaar’s platforms have seen a cropping up of small eateries including those selling baked corn, sandwiches, chats, lime soda, chocolate covered foods (with the help of a small chocolate fountain)and soup in the last five years. These provide the shoppers with a wide variety of light snacks to eat while shopping (especially on the platform) and are easy on their wallets and purses. Ranging between 10 and 40 Rupees, these salesmen know how to make money out of the lack of street food in Chennai, especially in Pondy Bazaar. 

Stalls selling light snacks right on the platform have become quite common in Pondy Bazaar over the last few years. 

The narrow roads combined with street parking, often free, makes traffic jams a common feature of Pondy Bazaar.  

Roads are very congested in T. Nagar and Pondy Bazaar because of their being predominantly retail shopping areas and an increase in private vehicles plying on city roads which is a result of the boom in the economy post-liberalisation. There is no scope for the further widening of these roads. There is no organised parking system for vehicles which adds to the problem of road congestion and traffic jams. The emergence of hypermarkets with no parking facility attached has compounded the problem of congestion. This results in long traffic jams that are not resolved quickly. 

Application of Spatial Triad to Pondy Bazaar:

I believe I can apply Henri Lefebvre’s spatial triad to my chosen location, Pondy Bazaar. Pondy Bazaar is spatial practice: the activities that the traders and shoppers and residents engage in on a daily basis forms the first component of the spatial triad; these are influenced by the geohistorical context in which development has taken place in this locality and its location near the centre of the city. The Chennai Municipal Corporation has certain ideas and plans for the improvement of Pondy Bazaar and conversion of the Panagal Park into a parking lot which has been criticised and objected to by resident groups in Chennai; this is the representations of space by two different groups of people. The last component of the spatial triad: Pondy Bazaar is representational space for Pondy Bazaar symbolises and signifies something deeper than just a commercialised locality to each and every individual who is a part of it: to the traders, it is a source of income, to the shoppers, it is a source of their pleasure, to the residents, it is home and security. All these come together to form the spatial triad that is Pondy Bazaar. 

Conclusion:

There are several shopping localities characterised by shops selling local goods on the platform, coexisting with shops dealing with national and international branded goods, and Pondy Bazaar is one such area. Despite the congested roads, the poor parking facilities and the lack of walking space for pedestrians who try to weave their way around the vehicles on the road, the experience of shopping in Pondy Bazaar is only one of its kind for most shoppers. 

Sowcarpet - A Migrant's Tale

“For of necessity in almost every city there must be both buyers and sellers to supply each other’s mutual wants; and this is what is most productive of the comforts of life; for the sake of which men seemed to have joined together in one community”

– Aristotle (as quoted in Madanipour, Impersonal Space of a City)

A DESCRIPTION OF THE SITE:

Sowcarpet is a locality in the North of Chennai with 1.09 kilometres from Parry’s Corner and 1 kilometre away from the Chennai Central Station. It is situated right in the heart of commercial Madras, with a profuse network of metro and bus routes connecting it to the neighbouring areas and deals with wholesale and retail goods and services.
It is reminiscent of a small North Indian town, with congested roads, familiarly dressed people, familiar languages being spoken and lots of cows straying on the roads obstructing traffic. Many bright name-boards in Hindi and Gujarati, along with Tamil,  were visible and the small snack joints sold several North Indian  delicacies.
One does not fail to notice that almost everything – from electronic goods to bangles, utensils to herbal medicines – all are bought and sold in this energetic space that is Sowcarpet. The Mint street is famous for clothes, and the Nainniappa Naicken street is famous for alternative medicine and the shops are known as “country medical shops”. The Audiappa Naicken street is where most of the electronics shops are located. 

Notice the Devanagri and Gujarati script below the Kasim Gold Covering and Tamil script above the same: A metaphor for the inter-cultural and inter-lingual locality that has emerged. 

                                               

Many such small and big snack houses can be found in the Sowcarpet area. 

A BRIEF HISTORY: LIVED EXPERIENCES OF THE THE MIGRANTS

The migrants from North Indian states of Gujarat and Rajasthan (with a few from others states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and even Andhra Pradesh) came over 300 years ago.  By the 1950s, there was a large migrant population swarming into the stable environment of Chennai to escape harmful business conditions in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, etc. The traders started with being pawn-brokers and later specialized into selling various items like ornaments, clothes, utensils, etc. In fact, it is said that there is nothing that cannot be found to be sold in this area.  This history was narrated to me by Mr. Bipin Kumar, who  came from a small town in Uttar Pradesh 17 years ago and had a wholesale shop of bangles in Sowcarpet.
The very name of the locality “Sowcarpet” is the result of the distorted pronunciation of the Hindi term Sahukar for traders and moneylenders.

An electronics shop owner, Mr. Agarwal, gave a useful insight into the how the area can be to be populated by North Indians.The Tamil-speaking residents of the locality had begun to lease out their houses to the migrant population. Gradually, as many migrants began to live in these leased houses and their numbers grew, the remaining local Tamil-speaking population sold out their houses to the North Indian migrants and moved out of the area.
The mass migration of the North Indian traders over the years has been enabled and favoured by the political conditions that prevail in the community-based settlements that have come to be. Most of the Marwari and Jain communities have their own "Dharamsalas" which provide newcomers with economic support in the form of cheap stay and food and help them to settle down a new business. Mr. Agarwal said this was very convenient for new comers in the region. Also, sharing a common village or town of origin fosters a web of networks between the newly arrived entrepreneurs and the already well-established seths or businessmen. The Social Capital shared among the members of the community is very valuable as it translates for economic value in very literal terms for them. Robert Putnam defines social capital as "norms and networks of civil society that lubricate cooperative action among both citizens and their institutions."
The new comers can borrow money, and learn from the experiences of the older settlers and also learn of their business connections.

Jacobs saw the neighbourhood  networks forged by the long-term residents of a city as irreplaceable social capital and this is seen to manifest very strongly in Sowcarpet as the migrant community shows solidarity with
each other and the manifestation of the same is seen in the various cultural markers that exist in the form of various temples such as the Svetambar temple on Mint Street which caters to the religious functions of the large Jain community.  Also, certain festivals which are celebrated mainly in the North of India, like the colourful Holi and Jain festivals are big events in this region of Chennai.

Yet, the garbage dumping on the streets and the unconcerned parking of vehicles question the very social capital that helps the migrant community flourish by establishing networks of trade and dependency in cases of emergency. Despite the various damages to social health, the sanitation on the streets is something which the communities have not come forward to deal with.

A Lodging House in Sowcarpet.  Dharamsalas of a similar sort offering cheap food and stay for migrants from the North is available. 

PHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURE

Henri Lefebvre, in the introductory chapter to his book, "The Urban Revolution" argues for the importance of  streets which manifest disorder by allowing all the static and redundant elements of urban life to be let loose and to fill the streets. He argues that without the existence of topos of streets and the interaction which takes place there, not only in terms of goods but also words, the process of urbanization can never be complete.

Lefebvre comments that the street helps the city to grow allowing it to appropriate places and by shaping its growth, and in the process brings the dominance of use and use value to dominate over the exchange and exchange value of goods. He further suggests that on street, time is merchandise time, which is used for buying and selling.  The streets on Sowcarpet bring this true with the various forms of purchasing that takes place by people standing on the street while dealing with the tiny shacks of shops where good are sold.

The streets are heavily congested and not well managed. Though, the bottle-necked in terms of physical movement does not affect in any way the monetary movement ranging to millions.

Stray cattle and piles of Garbages on the road prevent smooth flow of traffic

The peculiar look of the buildings in this region is that of a continuous pueblo like structure, only difference being that where the pueblos are horizontally spread, the buildings here appear to be vertically walled together. The houses seem to jut out of a common wall and there is barely a separation between them. It adds to the congested look of the region, with narrow lanes and unorganized parking. The ground floor, where the shops are located seem very much different from the upper floors where most of the shop-owners's  residences are located. The “sahukars” or the businessmen have set up their shops and residences in this area, with some having the shops on the ground floor, with some shops being only 10 metres square in size,  and their homes on the upper levels of the same building and some live in close proximity of their shops

The stark difference between the ground floor and the first floor of the same building –  architectural inconsistency gives an almost surreal look. 

MAIN PROBLEMS OF DISORGANIZED URBANIZATION

In my interviews with the local residents, there were two major problems that emerged:

1.  Increasing Population 

                                                                                      

A 10 square km area around Sowcarpet has an aproximate population of 43,46,389 people. The region, on a first look, seems to have grown sporadically. The planning of the region is not meant to accommodate the increasing population. The housing complexes have multi-coloured structures and appendages jutting out of them – urgently constructed to house the increasing numbers corresponding with constraints in financial resources. Mr. Agarwal had an interesting theory to share about the increase in population. He said that the increasing migrant population from the North had a family size of 6-7, whereas earlier the local Tamil speaking population had a limited family size of 2-3.This resulted in the housing of 70-100 people in a building, which otherwise was constructed to support only 40-50 persons.

2.  Lack of Transport and Civic Infrastructure

The problem of road management is very grave. The stray cattle, garbage piles and the careless parking of vehicles (maybe due to the lack of proper parking spaces) on the narrow streets make it impossible for the crowd of people and vehicles to move smoothly.

The variety of transportation mediums was amusing - from bailgadis to motorcycles and a few fancy cars. A unique mode of transport was the cycle rickshaw which operates only in a few other regions of Chennai (few operate in Mylapore too). Perhaps due to the narrowness of the alleys, cycle rickshaws are a more convenient mode over auto-rickshaws.

Mr. Bipin Kumar recounted the changes that had occurred in Sowcarpet and said that earlier the roads were wider and there was smooth flow of traffic, but as “development” occurred, there was a growth in population and the transport infrastructure was dilapidated. 

The congested look of the buildings and the street - Over population and Lack of Infrastructure

Unorganized Parking areas add to the congestion - Motorcycles, Garbage Bins and hawkers all  vie for the same space.

The roads were messy, with numerous potholes and accumulation of stagnant water, making the region a breeding ground for diseases. There have been several cases in the past where sewage water has entered the buildings during overflows. 

SYNEKISM AT PLAY

 It was highly unfortunate, that the owners of crores of rupees were doomed to operate their business in areas that look like pigeon holes.  This brings out the importance of propinquity in business. A major role is played by "Synekism" that Edward Soja defines as the stimulus of urban agglomeration - the economic and ecological inter-dependencies and the creative - as well as the occasionally destructive - synergisms that arise from the purposeful clustering and collective cohabitation of people in space, in a "home" habitat. The creative fecundity and conducive environment that arises out of this dense agglomeration and creates a loyal clientele for the traders may not exist in a posh area. The community based business areas create a good support system for the traders.Also, as Jacobs calls it, "the spark of city-life", is felt in the streets of Sowcarpet as they are bustling with transactions and dealings round the working hours. 

 Crawford market in Mumbai, where many Muslim and Parsi community based businesses exist and the area and  Chandni Chowk in Delhi exhibit similar spatial organization where millionaires operate through small dingy shops located in some congested alley.