Outside the signboard shops in Bagbazar of Kathmandu, these days, hang flags, badges and t-shirts with political parties’ flags and election symbols printed on them. The colourful ambience of the area makes you feel there is a carnival along the street.
It is not exactly a carnival, but these shop owners say they are in the busiest period of the past five years.
As the local elections are approaching, local leaders and cadres have crowded the places where they can get their publicity materials printed. As Bagbazar is known for the signboard and banner business for decades, it has become the capital of promotion material manufacturing these days despite an evolving change in the way how they electioneer.
The traders, hence, are happy and hopeful that the provincial and federal elections expected to be held by the end of this year will further expand the opportunity available to them.
Unprecedented business
As you walk along the old Bagbazar street in the centre of Kathmandu, you can see some designing election materials, while others are busy printing.
Naresh Chaudhary of Kamana Arts in Bagbazar affirms that they are swamped with work. There are four people in the shop, including Chaudhary, who have already printed 7,000 flags of the Rastriya Janamukti Party in the past few days while 3,000 are yet to be printed. “If I had called in four other people from the village as four I have with me are not enough to complete the work, it would have been easier,” he says.
The shop lately gets more than 5,000 orders a day with a high demand for flags and caps featuring the party symbols. There is a daily turnover of Rs 100,000.
He says, “After this, we have work pending for the Maoists and other parties too.” Chaudhary has packed his warehouse with resources to print caps, t-shirts, badges and other materials for the elections.
Opportunities galore
The situation is similar in other art shops in Bagbazar; everyone is printing election campaign materials as the election date is coming closer.
As per Suraj Khadgi of Sketch Media, “We have 1,000 or 2,000 materials to be printed daily, but, soon it will be 10,000 or more in a few days.”
Bhandari says he is designing the election campaign caps for the Maoist Centre as commissioned by the party’s Chandragiri municipal committee
He is printing up to 2,000 election materials daily and thinks that the work will be intensified after the elections get even closer.
Chaudhary says the atmosphere will be different even more after the political parties decide on the candidates. “We are still getting a lot of work, but the pressure will be even greater in coming weeks,” he shares and estimates that there will be more trade this year than in previous local elections.
He has been able to assess this from the experience of making promotional materials for the general conventions of the major political parties including the Nepali Congress, CPN-UML and Maoist Centre and the RPP.
Some concerns
But, the traders in Bagbazar are not only happy but concerned too.
Dilu Shrestha of Gold Print says she is worried about taking orders for election campaign materials. Why? Because they have not received payment for the work they did in the last elections (2017).
“The next elections are already around the corner, but we are yet to collect some Rs 150,000 to 200,000 for the last elections,” says Shrestha. “Political parties make us work but do not pay on time. I am taking another risk, let’s hope the party pays on time, this time.
Uday Kumar of New Everest Art located in Bagbazar is also printing 500 to 1,000 election materials daily. But, as the elections approach closer, he is concerned that the price of fabrics will rise. “We need the fabrics to make election materials, but the suppliers have started hiding the materials to increase the price of clothes,” says Kumar.
