By Malik Daniyal
Every Sunday, Srinagar’s Lal Chowk turns into a city-length fair.
From the Tourist Reception Centre to Hari Singh High Street, the Sunday Market takes over Residency Road with its mix of bargains, chatter and colour.
Shoppers hunt for clothes, kitchenware, books and second-hand finds. Artisans and traders spread out shawls, carpets and handmade work. Food vendors keep the lanes moving.
It’s a social hub as much as a market, an informal space that still creates real economic value. Local reporting and past studies help show its scale.
The market has been described as spanning roughly 2-3 kilometres through the city centre and traditionally hosts well over a thousand stalls on busy Sundays.
Past reporting cites figure ranges such as 1,300 vendors and even claims of several thousand people earning livelihoods across linked activities.
One 2016 report referenced a monthly turnover figure circulated by market representatives (reported at ₹20 crore in that piece), illustrating how concentrated weekly trade can add up.
The Sunday Market is in Lal Chowk partly because it offers what is commonly known as “temporal reallocation of prime land.”
Through most of the week, central Srinagar’s high rents restrict this space to established, capital-heavy retailers.
But on Sunday’s micro-entrepreneurs briefly access the city’s most valuable commercial corridor without bearing the fixed costs of permanent tenancy.
This dynamic use of premium urban space allows low-capital traders to tap into high-footfall zones, turning an otherwise expensive retail district into an accessible marketplace for hundreds of informal workers.
An academic study of the Sunday Market (University of Kashmir / related paper) examined vendor profiles, price-quality perceptions and job satisfaction, finding the market important for both lower cost goods and vendor livelihoods.
This shows that the market serves both consumers and micro-entrepreneurs.
Beyond stall revenues, the market creates demand for a chain of services like local eateries and tea stalls, autorickshaw and taxi drivers, temporary labourers who help set up/take down stalls, and small logistics suppliers. Food vendors and transport providers benefit from the footfall every weekend.
The second-hand clothing trade and used-book stalls lower consumer costs while maintaining circular flows of goods.
During seasonal peaks (pre-winter and festival periods), the market’s circulation intensifies, boosting incomes for hundreds more. Recent reporting also highlights the market’s role in keeping prices affordable for middle-class and lower-income households.
What keeps prices in the Sunday Market so low is a combination of sourcing strategies and the economics of the informal retail chain.
Much of the merchandise, especially garments, accessories, blankets and household items, comes from wholesale hubs brought in by traders who pool transport costs or purchase end-of-season stock in bulk.
Vendors commonly buy unsold inventory from large wholesalers at deeply discounted rates. In other cases, goods arrive as factory seconds, minor-defect items, or overstock from export houses, which naturally lowers the wholesale price.
Second-hand garments and books come from urban recycling markets, where traders purchase by weight rather than per piece, an extremely cost-efficient model.
Because of these sourcing practices and the absence of permanent shop rents, vendors operate with very low overheads.
A stall fee, transport costs and one helper’s labour make up most of their weekly expenses, allowing even small margins per item to translate into meaningful Sunday earnings.
Many vendors rely on high-volume, low-margin sales, where quick turnover compensates for modest per-item profits. Others adopt a higher-margin model. This means selling curated items such as Pashmina blends, carpets, handicrafts or winter wear.
In both strategies, the absence of fixed rents, electricity bills, and GST on informal sales keeps final consumer prices significantly lower than in formal retail.
The market survives and thrives on these lean cost structures, its ability to adjust prices on the spot, and the natural price discovery that emerges when hundreds of sellers compete side-by-side.
Part of the Sunday Market’s strength comes from consumer psychology. Shoppers are drawn not only by low prices but by the experience of searching, comparing and bargaining. The dense concentration of stalls lowers information asymmetry.
Here buyers can evaluate quality and price across several vendors within minutes. Continuous experimentation by traders like new styles, small-batch products, off-season goods add a sense of novelty each week.
This competitive, discovery-driven environment keeps footfall high and reinforces the market’s status as a preferred shopping destination.
Behind the scenes, the Sunday Market runs on intricate trust and credit networks.
Many wholesalers in Delhi, Ludhiana and Amritsar extend informal credit to Srinagar vendors based purely on long-standing relationships rather than formal collateral. Transporters, helpers and neighbouring stallholders operate within similar reputation-based systems, where reliability, not paperwork, determines access to services.
These social-capital-driven credit loops lower entry barriers for small traders but also expose them to risk; a single bad week or unexpected closure can disrupt repayment cycles and strain the informal financial architecture that keeps the market alive.
The market’s informality is both a strength and a weakness. It can adapt quickly to demand, but it is vulnerable to weather, administrative closures and public health restrictions.
For example, the market was shut during COVID restrictions and many vendors reported severe income losses.
The later re-openings required spacing and SOPs that reduced density and sales. Periodic closures after political events or security restrictions have similarly hit vendors’ incomes. These interruptions highlight how precarious livelihoods in the informal economy can be.
A sustainable policy approach to the Sunday Market must begin with recognising it as a legitimate economic institution rather than a weekly inconvenience.
The first priority is formal-informal integration, not formalisation but a lightweight vendor ID system issued jointly by the SMC and District Administration. This would allow traders to access micro-credit, accident insurance, and digital payment infrastructure without threatening their flexibility.
At the same time, the market needs urban design interventions that are inexpensive but high-impact.
The modular foldable stalls, clearly demarcated vending zones along Residency Road, and a weekend-specific traffic plan that uses timed diversions between Polo View and Lal Chowk to keep footfall high while reducing congestion.
The market would also benefit from a structured value chain link, where the Handicrafts and Handloom Department partners with Sunday vendors to pilot a “local first” corridor. This will help in ensuring that at least a segment of the market becomes a direct outlet for Kashmiri artisans otherwise squeezed by intermediaries.
A dedicated Seasonal Shock Buffer Fund, activated during natural disruptions, political closures or prolonged weather extremes, could offer small one-time payments to registered vendors. This will help protecting livelihoods in an economy where a single missed Sunday means a lost week’s earnings.
Finally, Srinagar could pioneer data-driven market governance. We will have weekly footfall counts, digital stall mapping and an annual micro-enterprise survey that will give the city real metrics on turnover, employment and consumer patterns, allowing administrators to base decisions on evidence rather than ad-hoc restrictions.
Together, these low-cost but high-impact measures would not only stabilise the market but position it as a deliberate instrument of urban economic development rather than a tolerated informal space.
Srinagar’s Sunday Market is more than a colourful Sunday spectacle. It is an economic node that supports micro-enterprises, lowers consumer costs and sustains ancillary services across the city.
Protecting its informal networks while building simple, low-cost infrastructure and financial access could turn the weekly bazaar from a precarious safety net into a more resilient engine of local prosperity.
- The author is a final year economics student at Delhi University. He can be reached at mdaniyal.054@gmail.com.
