Fab India's New Sari Store in Pune, India

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IMA Market- All women market in Manipur

by Anubha Sood

September 2009

Where would you find only women selling goods in a market? Not one or five women but more than 3200 women under one roof doing trade! This is Ima market, also known as Mothers Market or Khwairamband bazaar in Manipur. This all-women market according to the Manipuris has been there for over 100 years and has played an important role in Manipur’s history, even during the British Raj. Women between the ages of 16 and 66 gather here every morning and do business. They sell fish, vegetables, kitchen utensils, spices, handicrafts, Phaneks (sarongs), rugs, lanterns and much more in their stalls. One striking feature is that goods and commodities sold by these women are, for the most part, local products. Besides locally made handicrafts, items and produce from the neighbouring kitchen gardens, lakes, ponds, hills and farmlands are collected and sold here.

This is where they do their business, shop for their weekly goods, listen to each other’s stories, discuss politics, make plans and decide on what to write in a memorandum to the Government. This is where they run their own lives from as well as that of their community. Women we interacted with, their mothers and grandmothers also ran their business from the same place.

We were offered tea and sweets wherever we stopped to see the wares and chat a little. We had a famous Manipuri actress showing us around, which caught some attention with some of the Imas but most were busy doing business as it was time to shut shop and count cash. With some, we managed to interact a little and hear a bit about their business. Some women shopkeepers like to keep a little bit of everything but most like to specialise in one kind of produce or product. In some families these women are the sole earning members, and have managed to educate their children and run their families by means of their earning from this business. For others, it’s more a place to meet their friends and carry on the ancestral trade.

They have always faced challenges from rival markets, controlled by men. One of the women stated that sometime in 1948-52, some local male merchants even tried to demolish the existing shed. Another major incident occurred in the early 1990s, when the women received an eviction notice from the State urban development authorities. Currently, a new shed is under construction as the state government wants to rebuild it by demolishing the Ima market.

Regular bandhs, strikes and shoot outs in the state have also affected these women’s business in the Ima market. We could see how this might be a constant concern as even while we were there a bandh had us cut short our visit to Manipur. We couldn’t venture out and the bandh hours kept getting extended from 16 hours to 24 and then 48 hours. We had to take a flight out and abandon our plans to explore yet another uncharted part of the North East where we are planning to work as we partner with local organisations or entrepreneurs, of whom, we realised, there are plenty in the region. For us, it was possible to leave as the bandh affected our work but surely that was not an option for these enterprising women at the Ima market, for social, economic and cultural ties that underpins their lives in this difficult yet most beautiful of places.