On the evening of Diwali, Gujarati traders perform Chopda Pujan. They “place their new account books before deities,” Outlook Traveller explains. “The first page of a new ledger carries particular significance.” On it, traders commonly write Shubh, auspiciousness, and Labh, gain.
The timing follows the calendar. “Diwali falls at the end of the Vikram Samvat year,” and the Gujarati New Year follows it.
From April 1, 2024, Section 43B(h) of the Income Tax Act changed the rules for buyers from micro and small enterprises. If a buyer pays later than the legal limit of up to 45 days, the payment can be deducted only in the year it is actually made. Traders protested. Business Today reported that textile companies “often work with these small businesses on a credit system.”
The Confederation of All India Traders asked the finance minister to suspend the rule. The Federation of All India Vyapar Mandal went to the Supreme Court. Its president, Jayendra Tanna, said the rule “infringes upon the fundamental rights of MSEs to conduct business on their own terms.”
PM SVANidhi, launched by the Government of India in June 2020, lends money to street vendors without collateral. “For the first time, a loan of Rs 10,000 is given,” the government’s magazine New India Samachar explained in 2022. “On timely repayment of this loan, 20 thousand rupees are given in the second installment,” and “50 thousand rupees in the third installment.”
Vendors who repaid regularly also received an interest subsidy of 7 percent a year. In August 2025 the government extended the scheme to 2030 and raised the first two loans to Rs 15,000 and Rs 25,000.
Haath udhaar, a hand loan. The Rekhta dictionary defines it as a loan that is asked for when it is needed, without anything in writing.
A second definition adds the terms. It is given “without writing,” on the promise that it will be returned soon.
At a neighborhood kirana store, regular customers often buy on credit, udhaar. The shopkeeper writes the amount in a ledger, the bahi khata, and the customer pays later. Khatabook, an app founded for “replicating India’s bahi khata, or book of accounts,” reported “over 10 million monthly active users” in 2021.
Business Today asked shopkeepers how they get neighbors to pay their dues. One of them, Sushil Tripathi, explained why he does not press: “They might get offended if we ask them to pay the dues and move to another kirana store.”
Saakh. In the Rekhta dictionary: reputation, repute, goodwill, credit.
Izzat. Honor, respect, esteem, dignity, reputation, good name.
Naam paida karna. To create a name. In the dictionary’s Hindi definition, to gain renown and become famous.
“The most important class of credit Instruments that evolved in India were termed Hundis,” the Reserve Bank of India writes in its history of payment systems. One kind, the sah-jog hundi, was “payable only to a Sah or to his order.”
The RBI explains who that was. “A Sah was a respectable and responsible person, a man of worth and substance who was known in the market.”
In March 2013 Business Today reported that “banks have decided to publish in newspapers photographs and details like names and addresses of wilful loan defaulters.” The State Bank of India acted first, with notices on five defaulters in Delhi.
On Poila Boishakh, the first day of the Bengali year, traders close their old ledgers and open new ones. The custom is called haal khata. Customers are invited to settle old debts and start fresh. “Seeking to improve their relationship with customers, traders give sweets, snacks, or gifts to them,” Wikipedia notes. It is kept in West Bengal, Tripura and the Barak Valley of Assam, and in Bangladesh.
The Palanpuri Jains, a historic business community, are prominent in the diamond trade of Antwerp, with networks reaching Mumbai and Surat. Their trade, an article in The Conversation explains, “operates on credit, relies on trust.” It adds: “The diamond industry cannot enforce written contracts.”
The community’s own social controls do that work instead. “In the diamond trade, your name has traditionally been your collateral,” one Indian essay notes.