Like the proverbial cat, Chennai's Burma Bazaar—the grey market hub of Tamil Nadu—has had many lives by reinventing itself over the years as the situation demanded. But now, after nearly 50 years, its luck seems to be running out. Situated in the city's financial district—close to the spot where French Commander Comte de Lally placed his artillery some 250 years ago to mount an attack on Fort St George, which now houses the Tamil Nadu assembly—Burma Bazaar began life as a flea market around 1966.
Though information about its origin is sketchy, anecdotal evidence suggests that a group of Tamil refugees from Myanmar (then Burma), who were asked to wait outside Beach Station near the iconic EID Parry art deco building, ran out of cash and then decided to sell the slippers and plastic items they had bought while leaving that country.
Business picked up, word soon spread of the new market, and the free walls of Beach Station began to support the small shops set up by the refugees. Over the years, Burma Bazaar has had to transform itself numerous times to keep up with the changing times and tastes. From selling plastic goods in the beginning, it became the place where the elite of Chennai went to for buying imported goods.
It then morphed into a market for electronic goods, before being overtaken by Ritchie Street, off Mount Road. In its most recent avatar, Burma Bazaar was the piracy capital of South India, with VCDs and DVDs of new releases arriving on its shelves within days of the movies hitting the theatres. It was from here that pirated DVDs were redistributed to the entire south.
But with piracy moving online and onto mobile phones, business had plummeted and traders here are struggling to make ends meet. "I have my shop here from 1969 and for the past 10 years I have been selling VCDs and DVDs. But the last two years have been really dull—hardly one or two customers walk in every day," said SE Elango, one the senior shopkeepers at the bazaar, where about 800 shops now stand cheek by jowl.
"The future is uncertain, we need to see what other options are available." Though only about 160 shops now sell DVDs and VCDs in Burma Bazaar, most of these are located on prime real estate within the market, where shopkeepers pay rent of up to Rs 20,000 a month. Ashoka Holla, director of Berserk Media, which markets Indian film content across platforms, said the DVD piracy market in India is currently worth about Rs 100 crore, of which an estimated 40% comes from south Indian movies. "The figure about five years ago used to be in the range of Rs 300 crore, which has now steadily come down."
He pointed out that Tamil movie producers do not release official DVDs for five years, a primary reason for booming piracy earlier in places like Burma Bazaar. But most of the piracy now happens at neighbourhood mobile shops, where customers who come to recharge are also sold movies loaded in pen drives and memory chips for a nominal rate, Holla said.
"Since 95% of Indian market is through prepaid cards, every neighbourhood mobile shop has built a loyal consumer base. This has led to complete loss of business to thriving pirated DVD and VCD markets like Palika Bazaar in Delhi and Burma Bazaar in Chennai, where sales have fallen by more than 50%."
But many of the old-timers blame the DVD business for the "upperclass" customers now shunning Burma Bazaar. "The market's name got spoilt after traders began to do the VCD and DVD business as police started raiding shops here regularly," said 66-year-old Shahul Hameed, the general secretary of Burma Tamizhar Marumalarchi Sangam, the association of the traders.
"The old flavour of the Bazaar has gone—high-class customers don't come here anymore." He said the mushrooming of malls across Chennai has also hurt business, as imported goods and electronic items are freely available. "Now everything is available in AC rooms. Why will people come here?"
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