The glow of neon lights announcing the presence of new-age cafes, ice-cream parlours, pizza outlets and designer accessories reflecting on the rows of resplendent cars parked on the pavements. The shoulder-to-shoulder movement of pedestrians through the sea of faces in front of shop windows. The bustle of the traffic and chatter of smartly-dressed couples and youngsters drowning out the swish of the gentle breeze that fills in as dusk begins to descend. This, for you, is a weekend at the Firayalal crossing.

The posh roundabout in the heart of Ranchi, however, changes colours within a couple of hours on these idyllic Saturdays and Wednesdays. At 7.30 pm, as hordes of tribal women descend upon the place with vegatables beans, peas, green chilies, garlic, jackfruit, mushrooms the place turns into what the local people call the biweekly sabzi bazaar.

It was one such weekend when I could not help observing a smart couple when they stepped out of their fancy car and entered an icecream parlour. After paying Rs 78 for two cones and two scoops of an exotic flavour, the couple stopped to buy some beans from a tribal woman. Their behaviour did not really surprise me when they drove a hard bargain, ultimately forcing her to reduce the quoted price by Rs two.

When asked if they did the same at the hep-and-exorbitant icecream parlour, the couple just looked at me blankly. The young lady, ultimately, got the jist of what I was trying to say. These dirty women don't even give us a polythene packet with the beans. Why should they charge that high? she asserted. I probed further. So the poor woman lost those two rupees because she did not have a 10-paise packet that only harms the environment? Their reaction was again expected they left in a huff.

These tribal women from Mandar, Tamar, Bundu bring fresh green vegetables from their villages and thus attract more customers than the regular grocers across the city. The organic products they offer, grown without too much use of hazardous fertilisers, would have been selling for much more in metros but they still bring down the price at the customers whims.

In the five years since the Ranchi administration allowed these villagers to set shops twice a week at the Firayalal crossing, the lives of Sudeshni, Kharojni, Maknu Devi, Lahangi, some women who have been doing business here, remains unchanged. Mired in poverty, they sleep on the pavement, come rain or hailstorm before returning home next morning when trekkers start plying. They have failed to grow their business like Baidyanath Sah, who came from Bihar Gopalganj district, 600 km from Ranchi, to sell potatoes near civil court in 1998. Baidyanath now has five huge vegetable shops manned by six workers and has a turnover of Rs 1,500 to 2,000 everyday. The vegetable mart near the civil court has many Baidyanaths.

Sunil Minz's book Ab tum mujhe nahin rok sakte helps one understand why the tribals have failed to prosper in business unlike those who came to settle here from far away lands. Sunil, an Oraon who has dealt with the socio-economic life of the tribals in detail, book says that the Jharkhand aborigines have lived a self-contained life for centuries. They had a forest-based economy they used the forest wood to build houses and cook. They depended on Hodopathy (use of plants/roots as medicines) to sort out their health problems. They practiced barter system paid for paddy with salt and for pork with chicken. They also shared labour in their farms and money had no role at all. With cities encroaching upon villages, creating a variety of money-driven needs, the tribals are forced to go into the mainstream, though they are ignorant of its wily ways. The goverment has to do a lot more than just giving permissions.

Nalin Verma The Author is the Ranchi based special correspondent of the Telegraph