'Container-market' in Anjar will not "trade politics"

The town was donated 300 shipping containers at the state govt's request, to rehabilitate people who were affected by the 2001 quake.

In this dusty town where houses and shops were reduced to a rubble in the 2001 quake, traders make and sell their wares from unusual one-of-its-kind place in the world -- 'the container market'.

HT Image

Politically, however, they are all an unhappy lot and refuse to trade in politics.

After the January 26 tremblor that brought several areas to ground zero, Anjar town was donated 300 shipping containers by a private company at the state goverment's request, to rehabilitate affected people.

Now a thriving market, 'the container shops' are selling everything from clothes to jewellery, household articles and foodstuffs. Enterprising locals took up the challenge and transformed the containers donated as "emergency shelters" to functional workplaces.

However, people are in a quandary.

Rajendra Soni, a jeweller who conducts his business from inside a container, says "these are not what we hoped for".

"We want proper structures, to replace those of bricks and cement that collapsed," Soni says in one voice with a fellow trader compatriot Hasanmiyan Khayoum.

With reactions such as these, on the eve of the polls, district administration too is in a fix. Though the administration has built shops under the aegis of Anjar Development Authority, traders are unsettled about occupying them.