|
|
Society
The New Crafts Company
by Deepti Priya Mehrotra
November 13, 2005
Grey-haired
Rewat Ram of Phalodi, Rajasthan, could easily get lost in the crowd were
it not for the bright colors surrounding him. He sits, serenely
confident, amid stacks of beautifully woven kurtas, dupattas (long
scarves) and fabric in New Delhi's Chinmaya Mission hall, even as city
buyers carefully examine the goods brought in from far-flung desert
villages of Jaisalmer and Jodhpur in Rajasthan.
Ram and his co-weavers were participating in the first ever exhibition
put up by Ranga Sutra - a newly established producers' company - in
October, 2005. Explained Ram, "Some 15 years ago, I joined Urmul
Marusthali Bunker Vikas Samiti - a weavers' group - through which over
170 weavers are earning a regular livelihood. We have managed to save
the craft handed down to us by our ancestors. However, we have reached
saturation point in terms of our sales. That is why we have now started
Ranga Sutra. It will help us to develop the market systematically."
 Sumita Ghose, well-known social worker who has worked at the grassroots
level in Rajasthan, Assam and Delhi for the past two decades, is the
central moving force behind Ranga Sutra - which she defines as a family
of grassroots organizations coming together to find a space in the
market today. Ghose's eyes sparkle as she traces the inception of Ranga
Sutra: "Crafts-persons belonging to various grassroots organizations
provided the inspiration. During the past five years, people like Rewat
Ram ji have been saying that these organizations should open up a shop
to directly access urban consumers. I found several NGO-initiated shops
actually closing down - for instance the Dastkar and Udyogini shops
(both in Delhi). I felt that there must be other strategies as well."
 Hunting around for options, Ghose discovered the idea of a producers'
company. A producers' company is midway between the usual private
company on the one hand, and a cooperative on the other. Exploring the
option further, she found that so far only two Haryana-based milk
cooperatives have registered as Producers' Companies. Ranga Sutra is,
thus, the first crafts cooperative to register as a producers' company.
Says Ghose, "We thought, we've to do it in a way that is financially
viable. The form of organization is important."
The overwhelming majority of Ranga Sutra's shareholders are
craftspeople. These 1000-odd crafts-persons are the founding members of
Ranga Sutra. They belong to four organizations: 68 are from Vasundhara
Gramothan Samiti, Lunkaransar, Rajasthan; 350 from Bajju, Rajasthan; 123
from the Action North-East Trust, Kokrajhar, Assam; 350 from the Pan
Himalayan Grassroots Foundation, Almora, Uttaranchal; and 170 from the
Urmul Marusthali Bunker Vikas Samiti, Phalodi.
All these crafts-persons belong to economically impoverished,
marginalized communities living in remote areas - far from airports,
railway stations or even proper roads. Barely literate, denied
connections or infrastructure, as individuals it would be impossible to
sell their products to the wider world. Through participation in local
grassroots organizations, they realized the power of working as a group.
Wanting to further tap the potential and expand their reach, they
responded to Ghose's idea of a Producers' Company.
The five groups contributed Rs 10,000 (1US$=Rs 44) each to the original
share capital for Ranga Sutra. Apart from these five organizations,
there are five founding members of Ranga Sutra - all individuals,
including professionals from designing, business and the garment
industry. Ranga Sutra has taken no funds from the corporate sector or
from any funding agency.
Ranga Sutra hopes to combine the power of organization with the dynamism
of a commercially viable outfit. Social commitment coexists, here, with
hard-headed economic logic. Thus Ram foresees the income of each of the
170 Phalodi weavers rising due to Ranga Sutra. He says, "At present the
average annual earnings of each of our weavers is Rs 25,000 to 40,000.
Through Ranga Sutra's support this will rise. Weavers can then send
their children to school, improve their health and food intake.
Moreover, 20 new weavers will be able to join the organization every
year."
Between them, these five organizations represent traditional weaving,
embroidery, stitching as well as organic agriculture and horticulture.
The Uttaranchal group consists of women who make hand-knitted garments,
as well as fruit growers. The Assam group has women weavers from the
Bodo tribe. The group from Bajju consists of women embroiderers - most
of them refugees from the 1971 war. The Lunkaransar group has weavers
from Bikaner and Churu districts.
The weavers from Rajasthan and the North East work in unbelievably
bright colors, creating beauty from wisps of cotton or raw wool -
belying the dark, harsh conditions of their lives. While Bajju
specializes in embroidery, North Eastern and Phalodi crafts-persons
interweave intricate designs into their fabrics - geometrical motifs
passed down through the centuries, timeless in their appeal.
Registered in December 2004, Ranga Sutra's exhibition attracted a motley
range of buyers and activist supporters. Ranga Sutra has already
provided some design inputs, apart from the marketing support.
The idea seems to have taken off. Several other organizations, attracted
to Ranga Sutra's philosophy and transparently honesty, took part in the
exhibition. These include Satya Jyoti from Haryana, Charmkar Vikas
Sansthan, Seekar, Rajasthan, Kullu Karishma, Himachal Pradesh and
Shramik Kala Kendra, Karnataka. For Kakoli Banerjee from Satya Jyoti,
the experience was invigorating: "Our organization is just one year old.
This is the first time we have brought our products for bulk sales. Our
goods are selling well here. In fact, we may exhaust all our supplies
within these four days."
Satya Jyoti products are indeed attractive - juices, pickles, herbal
teas and other food items, as well as stylish garments. Banerjee herself
is a professional designer who left a hi-fi city job to relocate to
Satya Jyoti's 30-acre farm in village Sarekhurd, Alwar, Haryana. She and
her colleagues grow organic food, and teach sewing, embroidery and
literacy skills to women in the village. Banerjee envisages Satya Jyoti
formally joining Ranga Sutra.
Ghose wants Ranga Sutra to be "a place where rural meets urban, producer
meets consumer, and products become a means for human connection".
Already, it is a meeting point for many people's dreams. Its constituent
organizations, already active in integrated community empowerment, and
aesthetic creative production, are straining to further broaden their
horizons.
By arrangement with
Women's Feature Service
Top
| Society
The Week of November 13, 2005
Will
India's Government Survive November? by Rajinder Puri
India: The Prime Minister Fettered by Dr.
Subhash Kapila
Titans in Tiny Worlds by J. Ajithkumar
Was Hinduism Invented? A Review by Aruni
Mukherjee
One Night @ The Call Center A Review by G.
Swaminathan
Towards Re-Writing A History of
Indian Architecture by Ashish Nangia
Eighteenth Century India: French and English
Rivalry by Neria Harish Hebbar, MD
What are Puranas? Are They Myths? by Dr. R.K.
Lahiri, Ph.D
Seeker's Dilemma by Vikram Karve
Healthcare for Globe Trotters by Dr. Savitha Suri
Dragons Ahoy! by Nitin Jugran Bahuguna
Filling Schools in Sindh by Zofeen T. Ebrahim
Filming People of Paradise by Atul Gupta
The New Crafts Company by Deepti Priya Mehrotra
For My Daughter by Sujata Ashwarya Cheema
The Vagabond by Dhiraj Raniga
The Mystique Land by Sai Prakash
|
|
