Shift from physical to online classes dents pen sale : Companies have started reaching out to general grocery stores to arrest the slump

A student attends online class on a laptop: Gautam Bose

Debraj Mitra, Jhinuk Mazumdar, Gautam Bose   |   TT  |  Calcutta   |  18.07.21: The pen is no longer mighty.

A glowing screen in front and the keyboard or a stylus have replaced the traditional pen and paper combination for students, teachers and  even for a clerk in an office alike.

The prolonged closure of schools and colleges and curtailed attendance in offices because of the pandemic have led to a steep decline in the demand for pens, said makers, sellers and users.

A senior official of Linc Pen and Plastics, one of the biggest manufacturers of pens and stationeries in India, said before the pandemic, the company used to sell around 20 lakh pens every month in Calcutta alone.

“In May this year, we sold around two lakh pens in Calcutta.”

The company started reaching out to general grocery stores to arrest the slump.

The shift from physical classroom to online classes is one of the biggest contributors to the decline in the use of pens.

When in school, everything was by default on pen and paper. But now classes are online, students often record the classes and hardly use a pen.

Ahana Ghosh, a Class XI student of a school in Behala, needed at least three pens every month. Now she needs one. “I do not have to note down all the lessons,” she said.

“In school, teachers objected if we didn’t take notes. Now, the teacher posts a PDF copy of the lessons,” said a Class VIII student of a city school.

Students still have to write exams on paper and send scanned copies to teachers.

The decline in the use of pens is stark among teachers, who are checking assignments on phones, laptops or any other devices. “I do my corrections mostly on the phone,” said Joeeta Basu, economics teacher at St  Xavier’s Collegiate School.

For want of resources, many students have been left out of the ambit of online classes. Private tuitions have also shifted to the online mode. These factors have added to the further decline in the usage of pens.

Dhruba Ghosh, who teaches English in a New Alipore School, said: “I needed two to three red pens every month. Now, one pen serves me for two months.”

Schools usually buy stationery, including pens, round-the-year. But this has gone down during the pandemic. “Assignments are happening online and so are corrections. So, the purchase of stationery, including pens, has gone down,” said Krishna Damani, a trustee of South Point.

Usually, schools would keep a stock of stationery for their teachers and administrative staff.

“Since the teachers are not coming to school the consumption has gone down,” said The New-town School founder-director Sunil Agarwal.

Both government and private offices are functioning with a limited number of staff, leading to a decline in the use of stationeries.

The office of a pharmaceutical company in central Calcutta has been functioning with 10 people, compared to the full strength of around 35. “Hence, the use of pens has gone down,” said a senior executive of the firm.

Khokan Chanda, a pen distributor who lives off the Jadavpur-EM Bypass connector, used to stock up pens worth Rs 30,000 every month before the pandemic.

“I used to sell 700-800 pens every week. Now, selling 20 has become a challenge,” he said.