The Gazetteers Department

According to the census of 1951, the various trades in the district, wholesale and retail, money-lending, banking and other financial business, real estates, and insurance provided the primary means of livelihood to 80,361 persons or 5.4 per cent of the population, and a subsidiary means of livelihood to 13,231 persons. Excluding dependents, the self-supporting persons engaged in these trades numbered 19,849; of these 4,479 were in rural areas and 15,370 in urban areas. The distribution of self-supporting-persons engaged in various activities was retail trade 17,223; wholesale trade 1,507; money-lending and banking 1,029: insurance 85 and real estate business 5.

Jalgaon being an inland district its traders do not engage themselves specially in directly importing or exporting goods and naturally its trade is patterned to suit the needs of its population. The commodities of trade are either locally produced or imported to satisfy the needs of the district.

The chief articles of import are cloth, iron and steel goods, building materials, grocery, stationery goods, drugs and medicines, implements and appliances, hardware, rice, wheat and many other miscellaneous useful articles such as toilets, footware, crockery, etc. These commodities are mainly imported from Bombay, Calcutta, Nagpur, etc. The export trade is mostly in cotton, groundnut, groundnut oil and cake, cotton-seed, bananas, mug, udid, chavali and ghee for which the district is famous. Almost half of the cotton grown in the district is exported to Bombay and the rest to Ahmedabad, Kanpur, Madras, Nagpur, Burhanpur, Sholapur and Aurangabad. Important centres of wholesale trade of cotton in the district are Jalgaon, Amalner, Chopda, Bhusawal, Bodvad, Chalisgaon, Pachora and Raver. Groundnut oil is chiefly exported to Bombay and Dalmianagar. Faizpur, Raver, Yawal, Bhusawal, Jalgaon and Pachora are the chief centres of groundnut trade. Another article which deserves to be mentioned as an important item of export trade is banana. The total volume of exports during 1958 amounted to 5,010 tons. They are mainly exported to Delhi, Bombay, Kanpur, Bhopal. Ratlam and Udaipur. The main centres of banana export trade-are Nimbhora, Savda, Vaghoda, Raver, Bhusawal, Pachora. Chalisgaon and Jamner.

The break-up of the total number of persons in various categories of trade was as under: retail and wholesale trade in foodstuffs alone empoyed in 1951 about 9,804 or 49.4 per cent of the total of 19,849 self-supporting persons employed in all trades. Wholesale trade in commodities other than foodstuff's employed about 545 persons; retail trade in fuel about 1,294; retail trade in textile and leather goods about 2,275 persons; money-lending, banking, etc., about 1,119 persons and retail trade otherwise unclassified about 4,808 persons. This pattern of trade clearly brings forth the predominance of agriculture in the district economy. The main wholesale trade centres in the district are Jalgaon, Amalner, Chalisgaon, Pachora, Bhusawal, Savda, Bodvad, Nimbhora, Shendurni, Varangaon and Mehunbare where the following regulated commodities are handled: groundnut, cotton, banana, mug, udid, corriander and chillies. The retail trade is distributed all over the district but it is mainly centred in towns. Jalgaon, Bhusawal and Chalisgaon are the main urban centres of retail trade having 2,439 and 1,149 retail shops, respectively. The retail shops handling different commodities in their order of importance are as follows: grocery, pan bidi, cigarettes and tobacco, cloth and hosiery, wood, fuel and timber, stationery and cutlery, bangles and provision, fruits and vegetables, medicines and drugs. In the rural areas almost every village has a retail shop or two. Chalisgaon taluka has the highest number of shops with 722 and the average for the district works at about 4 shops for a village. The other constituents of trade in the district are market places, fairs, pedlars and hawkers. At the market places periodical bazars are held and they serve as the centres for assembling and distributing goods. There are more than 100 centres where such periodical markets are held. Fairs are a typical feature of the rural economy and are held at places of religious importance. They attract quite a large number of traders who deal in commodities of all types. As many as 168 important fairs were held in the district in 1958, with Jalgaon and Yawal talukas having the highest number at 31 each. Of the remaining constituents, pedlars have a place of importance in the commercial economy as they provide a connecting link between the rural consumers and the traders in the town as they constantly move from one area to another. In spite of the establishment of big shops in the rural areas and easy transfer of goods from one place to another the importance of pedlars has not diminished. The counterpart of the pedlars in the towns are the hawkers who could be regarded as representatives of retail traders in towns. They make big towns as centres of their activity and are found in Jalgaon, Bhusawal, Amalner, Chopda, Savda and Parola. Their total number is estimated at about 250 in the district.

Though the estimate of the total turnover in respect of trade in the district is difficult, it is possible to get its rough estimate by taking into consideration the volume of turnover of dealers whose yearly business exceeds Rs. 30,000 and who are, therefore, registered dealers under the Sales Tax Act. The Sales Tax returns for the year 1955-56 show that there were 1,281 dealers and their total turnover amounted to Rs. 3,23,346.

Factors such as internal and external competition, financial and technical difficulties have forced the traders in the district to form themselves into co-operative unions for the purpose of purchase and sale, finance and warehousing, etc. In 1958 there were 28 cooperative marketing societies dealing in various commodities, 17 cotton sale societies and 13 banana sale societies. These societies aim at safeguarding the common interest of their members, promote mutual co-operation and formulate common policies. Often the disputes amongst the members are mutually settled by being referred to self appointed arbitrators.

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