After-shocks hit Pashupati’s grey market

This mountain-side market town in Nepal’s Ilam district, just two km from the Indian border, was spared by the recent earthquakes that devastated the Himalayan country. But, Pashupati (short for Pashupati Nagar; named for Pashupatinath, Nepal’s leading deity) is still in the grip of the aftershocks, of the business kind.

For several years now, Pashupati has been an entry point for Chinese goods, mainly electronics and consumer products, into India. A Silk Route of sorts linked Chinese manufacturing towns to the vast market in North Bengal, Sikkim and Jharkhand via Kathmandu and Pashupati.

Traders and consumers from Darjeeling (around an hour’s drive), Siliguri (nearly 80 km), Kalimpong, Alipurduar and Gangtok make shopping trips to Pashupati for the unbelievably cheap Chinese wares. To woo customers, tourism operators include a shopping trip to Pashupati in their tour itineraries. Scores of small shops lining the zigzag downhill road sell duty-free, low-priced electronic goods, household items, FMCGs, leather suits, bags, toys and hundreds of other goods.

The Chinese versions of many international cosmetic brands are also available. Authorities on both sides of the border wink as thousands of shoppers return daily from the market downhill with their hands full of Chinese goods back to India, 2 km uphill, in taxis.

You go downhill in one taxi and return after several hours of shopping in another. The coupon given to you by the first taxi driver can be used for a ride back in any other taxi and you only pay when you get off.

But, post-earthquake, things are not as they used to be. The shops are not overflowing with goods. Electronic goods are scarce. And, shoppers, attracted by Pashupati’s reputation for low prices and product range, return disappointed.

“Customers are there in plenty, but we cannot meet their demands fully,” says Suman Thapa, a young shopkeeper. Why? Because, the supply lines are broken. “We used to get our supplies from Kathmandu on a daily basis,” explains Thapa. “But the earthquakes destroyed the roads and bridges along the 550-km route in dozens of places and hence the trucks and buses that used to carry the Chinese goods are unable to travel.” The supply- chain breakdown has hurt Pashupati’s unique economy. “Business is really down this season,” Milon Chhetri, secretary of the Far Eastern Night and Day Bus Entrepreneurs Association, told BusinessLine .

The prosperity of his organisation’s members depends directly on Pashupati business fortunes. After the earthquakes, there was a slump in demand for a few weeks as Indian customers stayed away fearing the next round of quakes might hit Pashupati too.

When demand recovered, there was this debilitating supply chain breakdown. “Shoppers from faraway places come here to buy electronic goods,” an Indian shopkeeper at Pashupati said. “But we have very few electronics on the shelves.”

It may take some time to get the roads and bridges repaired and for the supply lines to spring back to life. Until then, Pashupati may disappoint Indian shoppers eager to make a killing from across the Himalayan border.

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