Customers usually come from far and wide to buy rifles and shotguns from the dozens of tiny shops clustered in a bazaar in the ramshackle town of Kanpur, the gun capital of India's Uttar Pradesh state.
But business has stopped. Arms sales have been banned as the country's largest state -- infamous for lawlessness -- holds month-long polls under heavy security, halting one of the area's most profitable sectors.
"This has been traditionally a very large market for the guns and perhaps it's one of the biggest markets in northern india," said senior city police officer Alok Singh.
PHOTO: AFP
"It not only caters to Kanpur but there's an adjoining area where there is a tradition of bearing arms. So they come to Kanpur to purchase their arms."
Singh was referring to Bundelkhand, an undulating arid area that spans southern Uttar Pradesh and neighboring Madhya Pradesh state and is known for a macho culture and the prevalence of bandits.
"In these parts, it is very much a culture to have a weapon slung across your shoulder," said Javeed Ahmed, a senior police officer for Kanpur and surrounding areas.
"It is as much a requirement for security as a cultural thing."
There are approximately 130 gun shops in this city, according to the local arms licensing office, most of them along the old Meston Road in the heart of Kanpur, a former mill town sometimes called India's Manchester.
With little industrialization in these areas, guns are also one of the few status symbols available to locals, he added.
"There's no industrialization, nothing to divert attention," said Ahmed.
At one point some districts in the state even used the popularity of guns as a tool in population control, offering gun licenses to those who brought in people to be sterilized.
Many of Kanpur's shops have old fashioned names -- like "Imperial Arms" and "Lords Gun House" -- with attractively painted signs portraying rifles and, on occasion, fearsome-looking men wearing sunglasses.
At the moment, however, with a seven-stage election underway, no guns may be sold. Shopkeepers are passing the time cleaning the weapons, painting the shops and talking politics.
On Friday, 16 million voters were eligible to vote for 58 members in the 403-seat state assembly under the watch of almost 70,000 paramilitary troops in the second stage of voting.
In the run-up to the elections, residents have been asked to deposit their weapons with local gun shops.
"We have about 200 guns in our deposit," said clean-cut Afzal Alam, 30, whose grandfather started the Mehboob Alam & Sons arms store some 50 years ago.
The store sells Indian-made as well as vintage rifles from World War II and a Colt rifle manufactured in Connecticut in 1888, which would sell for about 100,000 rupees (US$2,270).
Crime has gone up and more and more people come to buy guns for self-protection, added Alam.
"People buy guns a lot for weddings also," said Gulzar, 26, who uses only one name and runs Universal Guns, also owned by the Alam family.
Gulzar explained that many people use rifles to shoot bullets in the air to express their joy as they sing and dance in the procession that accompanies a groom to his wedding.
Gun sales have been good in recent years, said gun store proprietor Zia-ul Islam Chowdhary, general secretary of the Kanpur arms dealers association.
"Business is comfortable," said Chowdhary, "This government is issuing more gun licenses."
There are approximately 800,000 arms license holders in Uttar Pradesh, according to the state's home ministry, more than 20,000 of them in Kanpur.
The current government, which is run by Mulayam Singh Yadav and the Samajwadi Party, has been blamed by opponents for being soft on crime.
The state's growing reputation for lawlessness has been a campaigning point for the opposition in the polls, in which Yadav is fighting for re-election.
But police officer Ahmed said that in many cases, guns were vital for the safety of villagers in rural areas where bandits roam and where there may be only one policeman for 2,000 residents.
"Someone living in a far-flung hamlet has some justification to have a weapon if he can have afford one," said the police officer.
Some gun shop owners like Chowdhary are sure business will pick up once votes are counted on May 11.
"The customer who is not able to come now will come later," Chowdhary said.
"If he has to buy a gun, he's going to buy a gun," he said.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was