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Koti book vendors stare at heavy losses
Shopkeepers at Koti who sell second hand books are fretting over the change in syllabus for SSC and Intermediate subjects in Telangana. The government has changed about 25 per cent of syllabus for Telugu and Social subjects for SSC. Meanwhile the syllabus for Humanities stream for Intermediate students has been completely revamped this year.
With a change in SSC and Intermediate syllabus and no stock of new books, the shopkeepers are battling heavy losses. This has been compounded by the government’s decision to offer discount on books
Shopkeepers at Koti who sell second hand books are fretting over the change in syllabus for SSC and Intermediate subjects in Telangana. The government has changed about 25 per cent of syllabus for Telugu and Social subjects for SSC. Meanwhile the syllabus for Humanities stream for Intermediate students has been completely revamped this year.
The academic year is about to begin in a week and traders lament that students haven’t shown much interest in purchasing the old stock of books. Each year, around this time, many shopkeepers would have already sold second hand books and would have ordered for more books, but this is the not the case this year.
“We usually have a stock of 20 to 30 sets of all subjects for each class by this time of year which we sell at retail prices. But this year, our margin of profit has been less than 4 per cent. Even this is being dug into due to transportation charges. Rs 2 lakh worth books are now being sold for less than Rs 50,000,” lamented Shiva Kumar, a book shop owner.
This is just the tip of the iceberg for the traders. Apart from the change in syllabus, the shopkeepers are also hindered by the discount offered by government for Intermediate textbooks and the delay in the arrival of new textbooks. “Just recently we received a brief stock of SSC textbooks.
We hope to receive more books in couple of days. But as of now, we haven’t received any stock of Intermediate textbooks,” said Krishna, owner of Saraswati Book Centre. The traders are also say that over the last few years they also started facing losses in the sale of school uniforms as many institutions have taken up that franchise.
“People are even not willing to buy school bags and shoes from the market. Though we offer 20 per cent discount, people still prefer to purchase the goods from shopping malls,” rued a seller Shaik.
M Rashmi, N Satish & V Satish
