IItf – 2009

IItf stands for India International trade fair. It is a big event that happens at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi once every year. It is a short lived event where entrepreneurs from different parts of the country come and setup stalls to exhibit their products. Pavilions are setup and each state depending on their size and ability are assigned different pavilions, for ex: while states like Gujarat, Karnataka and Tamilnadu had their own pavilions, Uttaranchal, Goa and Lakshadweep shared a common pavilion.

The trade show attracts lots of attention in Delhi. Schools organize field trips to the event and people in general throng to the event. To give an account for the popularity of the event, government of India has arranged park and ride stops for the event, the ticket for the event had a word of caution “In the view of security of the people, Pragati maidan will only allow first 1 lakh people to enter”.

Most states had setup their pavilion to depict something about the state (ex: Assam had Kaziranga National Park as the external theme and Karnataka had Belur temple as the external theme). There was no standard way in which the inside of the pavilions were organized, while some states had some tourism info and the attractions of the state and information on developments made in the last few years, others only had stalls and stores and everything inside the pavilion was for sale. The north eastern states had show cased their bamboo artwork and some of them were really intricate and I could see that lots of attention had been paid to the detail of the work. Most of the stalls were handloom based while very few showcased machine made and some even showcased imported things.

The best of the ones I visited were Kerala, Karnataka, West Bengal and Himachal Pradesh where they had a blend of handloom and tourism and a focus on small business. In Kerala pavilion when I saw the different kinds of halwa (a kerala traditional sweet) I remembered my dear friend Mr. Iyer. The Karnataka pavilion which along with other things showcased KSIC Mysore silk had exhibited couple of sarees that were 50 odd years old and still looked brilliant and bright. The most disappointing pavilion was Gujarat, which didn’t show case anything handloom but only boasted their prowess in technology and service.

The food was setup in a separate pavilion where all different states had their own food stalls; the biggest rush was for Punjabi, Karnataka and Andhra food. I was interested in trying something from Orissa but had to settle for Mysore masala dosa. The others with me tried some kerala food.

On the whole the event was well organized with maps located all over the place and information booths at the different gates. Needless to say security was really tight with armed police patrolling the place.

The only sore eye came in the form of transportation, when we had to get back home and no auto-rickshaws were available. It was truly a struggle even though we had a prepaid receipt for the same. Fighting to get the rickshaw made me realize that people in India are fighters and we have to fight every moment.

The trade show for me showed the potential for manufacturing and market for Indian made goods. There were goods for all price ranges starting from few tens of rupees to few tens of thousands of rupees and there were customers for all the ranges.