Geography · Ch 6 — Tertiary and Quaternary Activities
Trade and commerce
Trade and commerce
Trade is the buying and selling of items that have been produced elsewhere. Commerce covers all the services — retail and wholesale — that are carried out specifically for profit. The towns and cities where these activities take place are called trading centres.
The evolution of trade, from local barter to international money-based exchange, has given rise to many such centres and institutions. Trading centres act as points of collection (where goods are gathered from producers) and distribution (where goods are sent out to consumers).
Rural and Urban Marketing Centres
Trading centres are divided into two broad types based on the settlements they serve.
Rural Marketing Centres
- These centres cater to nearby villages and small settlements.
- They are quasi-urban centres — not fully urban, but more than purely rural.
- They represent the most rudimentary (basic) type of trading centre.
- Personal and professional services (like lawyers, doctors, consultants) are not well-developed here.
- They function as local collecting and distributing centres.
- Most have mandis (wholesale markets) as well as retail areas.
- Though not urban centres by themselves, they are significant because they make available the goods and services most frequently demanded by rural people.
A mandi is a wholesale market where farmers bring their produce to sell in bulk.
Periodic Markets in Rural Areas
- Found where there are no regular, permanent markets.
- Organised at different temporal intervals — weekly or bi-weekly.
- People from surrounding areas come to these markets to meet their temporally accumulated demand (goods they need but cannot get daily).
- These markets are held on specified dates and move from one place to another.
- Because the market moves, the shopkeepers remain busy on all days, while a large area is served by them.
Urban Marketing Centres
- These centres have more widely specialised urban services.
- They provide both ordinary goods and services and many specialised goods and services required by people.
- Urban centres offer manufactured goods as well as specialised markets for:
- Labour
- Housing
- Semi-finished or finished products …
The photograph in Figure 6.2 shows an open-air wholesale vegetable market, a scene that is common in many Indian towns and smaller cities. The image is black-and-white, and the key visual elements are: large heaps of produce (likely vegetables) piled on the ground or on sacks, many people moving around or standing among these piles, and parked trucks visible in the background.
This is not a retail shop where a customer buys a few kilograms. Instead, it is a mandi — a wholesale market where farmers or intermediaries bring their harvest in bulk, often by truck, and sell it in large quantities to smaller retailers or sub-agents. The "heaps of sacks and produce" are the goods being traded, and the trucks are the means of transport that bring these goods from the surrounding rural areas into the market. …