JOIN USOne of them is Bharat Kumar, manning a makeshift book stand. Ask him what he does once the counselling season ends, he says: “I drive an autorickshaw.”
Kumar and the others, many of them daily wage workers, transform into student advisors during the CET season, capable of advising students on the guide books to be referred to, and even on the colleges that one should choose, once they get over the CET hurdle.
“I have been doing this for three years,” says Bharat. It gives him a sense of pride that he sells books to aspirants of professional courses. RK Publications has appointed Bharat to sell their college guides in their stall.
From name and address to fee structure, these books provide all the information a CET examinee requires.
Like Bharat, there are seven other people manning stalls. Bharat gets paid more than Rs 300 on an average daily from RK publications. “They pay us regularly. And even when we don’t sell books, they do pay us a bit,” said Bharat. He says each year, business is getting better.
From 8 am to 6 pm, Bharat works and then he shifts into the khaki uniform and gets into his auto.
On another side of the centre, there is a line of temporary stalls put up by almost all the banks in the city.
Trying best to lure students to take up education loans, these stalls fight for business.
Shameer, who sits in Syndicate Bank stall, said that since the beginning of CET counselling, the banks have had a stall. Each bank stall pays Rs 50,000 to the centre, totalling Rs 4.5 lakh in income to the centre. “I’ll be back next year,” says Bharat.