What markets do for people

Markets connect producers and consumers, so people, families and businesses can get things they can't make themselves. What if farmers stopped bringing rice, wheat, dal and vegetables to market? Or Surat's weavers couldn't buy cotton?

But not everything finds a market easily. Aakriti paints in oil on canvas. People like her work, but she struggles to find buyers, and doesn't know what price to ask. Unlike guavas, art has few buyers and sellers, so there's no settled price to guide her.

Buyers can also change what gets made. When many people start asking for refrigerators that use less electricity, producers notice and make more of them. Nobody gave an order, yet society gets energy-saving fridges!

Markets aren't only about money. Often relationships grow between buyers and sellers, lasting generations. Families trust the same tailor, jeweller and doctor for decades. Many families keep an account with the local grocer and pay at the end of the month: "Tell Raju bhaiya my name; I'll pay on the 1st." That's pure trust.

So besides its economic role, the market has non-economic meaning in people's lives too.

Ima Keithal ('Mother's Market' in Manipur's Meitei language), in Imphal, is special: about 3,000 women own and run all its shops, selling vegetables, clothes (including traditional Manipuri dress), handloom, handicrafts, local produce and daily needs.

It gives jobs and income to thousands of families, and it's a melting pot of cultures where communities meet and share traditions.

In south India, sellers of haldi and kumkum give a little free, as a sign of good luck and good wishes. Not every exchange in a market is a sale!