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Leveraging Local Labour

The streets of India are filled with vibrancy and most of the retail happens by leveraging local labor. Vendors selling local flavors and skills occupy busy spaces to offer their services at cheap rates, which leverage their sales.

This not only generates employment for a Nation but also initiates community sharing and interaction. There is a lot to learn from the display of these goods and their skill of selling. The prices are so affordable that it engages temptation and buying.

In regions of economic decline, people will play the most important role in building retail communities and displaying their local talent in the retail business. The services are fast and have a local flavor. This immediately engages consumers who are looking to buy or eat something on their way back.

Staying in a hostel, I needed cheap objects in barter for my room like cupboards, trunks, mats and then I came across the Sunday Market.

In Ahmedabad, the concept of Sunday Market is intriguing. Here people collect early morning every Sunday to sell and exchange local goods. Imagine fixing your toaster on the roadside in a few minutes at half the cost or exchanging things that are not required by you anymore with things that are really needed. Flowers, food, books, electronic gadgets, anything is possible to fix or obtain in these vibrant street markets. Leveraging local retail plans also exist in Dadar and Crawford Market, Mumbai, India. People travelling in trains after a tired day engage in street shopping before taking their trains to return home.

These markets taught me a lot in terms of fostering economic growth and sustainability. The future of the regions depends on skill-based employment and such markets are a platform for skill-based growth. Also, exchange of goods help in decreasing the carbon footprint. The streets markets not only leverage local labor but also help in community building. People at the bottom of the economic grid also desire objects. These markets unravel the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid by unravelling the fortune in skills and labor domain of a region. They not only give an opportunity for the poor to become sellers but consumers or employers as well. 

I believe such markets of exchange and local flavor can add vibrancy to any region and accentuate the quality of living of regions facing economic decline. Trapping local labor to leverage sales is the unique attribute of these markets.

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