It was May this year that I met Mukhtiyar at Munshi’s sunnat function in Pugal. Of course Munshi, Mukhtiyar’s youngest son could not be seen, tucked away as he was in the soothing lap of her mother and dadi.
Nazru Khan, Mukhtiyar’s brother had cooked the fabulous mutton curry as the main course in lunch. We all ate together, the rich aroma of the curry mingling with fragrances from past days. Mukhtiyar had embarked on his journey of discovering the finer nuances of the sufiyana qalam gayaki some years back. It was indeed a modest beginning of a journey in the making of a singer who now had the opportunity to perform before audiences all overIndia as well as in Belgium, Spain, Sweeden, China. Abdul Jabbar has also gone with him on some occasions.
Mukhtiyar started telling of his recent experience of working in a music band in Chennai that had around thirty members. There was a baul singer from Bengal as well. Mukhtiyar was the ‘Rajasthani Sufi’ face of the band, pitching in with his soul stirring taans that were the characteristics of his full throated melodious voice. But you know, ‘for earning a secure source of livelihood I have to go all the way to Chennai, and then I cannot do anything for my musical traditions and roots here at Pugal with my community’, exclaimed Mukhtiyar.
Around four in the evening, Guman suggested that we should get back to Bikaner. It was eighty kilometers and should take us not less than two hours if not more, depending on the traffic of the lorry trail carrying limestone and gypsum. We bid farewell to the Mirs of Pugal.
Mukhtiyar said he was coming to Bikaner after two days. He had to leave for Chennai, his work place…..
In an interview given to the Bulletin, Sheopat Singh has talked about the numerous struggles for settlements and resettlements in Stage I of the Command Area of IGNP fought mainly between 1969-1972. In the project implementation of Stage II, however, the World Bank seemed to have adopted several welfare measures in paper at least.
According to a Report [No 447-IN] dated 1974, it says :
"The entire RCP area is being settled by landless farmers from nearby areas. The area has been divided into 6.32 ha farm units [=1 Moraba]. Each settler purchases one farm unit from GOR at an average cost of Rs 15755/-, payable over 15 years without interest. Pre-1955 tenent farmers living in the project area recieve one farm unit free and have the option of purchasing one additional unit."
Actually this was a recipe for the growth of a full blown land market replicated from experiences from Stage I, where " more than half of original allotees have sold off their lands[mostly to rent-seeking officials and politicians], much of it now being sharecropped' [ Micheal Goldman, The Fate Of the Desert: A Study of the Indira Gandhi Canal, Feb.1992]
But for Stage II this recipe was topped with concern for landless farmers. So what did he really get? According to the experiences narrated to M.Goldman [p.11,Ibid]
“In 1978, we applied for allotments on the Govt. land set aside for local landless in Bikaner Distt. We didn`t get the land, so we captured it. At that time I was active in a number of local struggles, and we thought this was very important. We were all canal workers and local landless. I kept my own plot for 5-6 years; then I was jailed.
Even so, they knew we were not prepared to leave the land; many finally received official allotments; they
gave me uncommand land, so I fought for seven years for water (only command land gets canal water). My case in
the High Court is still going on; one of my colleagues threatened to immolate himself if he didn`t get water. We did
n`t want him to die, so we all took over the CAD office and gheraoed the executive engineer and forced him to call up the Chief Engineer to tell him things would get bad unless he gave the farmer water. The second day, the official notice came. We built kuccha watercourses ourselves, because the canal people refused to, though it`s their job. But we wanted land and we wanted water.
Many peoples’ land is high on sand dunes and cannot be irrigated; we received the worst possible land. Those who are part of official chak plan receive water; at the start the engineers came around demanding money to put peoples’ land into the official plan; we all refused to pay bribes, and none of us got water.”
This is the kind of testimony which puts in a nutshell most of the themes and issues that are not merely abstract and fleeting, reflecting just the concerns of the time but going beyond that, driven by a dominant historical logic. This is a qualitative document on struggles being waged in the IGNP area based on its specific agenda and the mandate that goes with it.
The Origins of ‘Chaks’
The emergence of chaks at a certain moment on the historical horizon has much to do with land settlement issues in the arid zones of western Rajasthan. It was a certain form of resolution by the colonial administration to the vexed issue of maximizing revenues from cultivable lands in the desert. In a region where only 10-15 % of the total land area was under the plough, the remaining vast stretches of land in the arid ecosystem, lying even beyond the confines of village commons, came to be regarded as `wastelands` under the purely colonial `gaze`. Yet under the same gaze, these wastelands were not seen for what they were, i.e., areas ofregional transhumance, even though pastoralism was seen to be a reality, because "these unoccupied wastes" fell under the "State`s landlord rights" which it was determined "to exercise" by "bringing under cultivation " [Bikaner Survey & Settlement Report,P.J.Fagan,1893]
There was a two pronged policy followed by the state; one to privilege the chaudhuries/jats as the mainstay of landowning and cultivating castes while downplaying or totally ignoring the claims of nomads/pastoralists on land per se and two, to increase the extent to cultivated land through deployment of limited ownership/lessee rights through summary settlements in the wastelands , now redefined as a chaks. Special inducements were provided through giving the girinda or the lessee of the chak a semblance of land rights in order to develop cultivation at the expense of pasture and grazing. Under the colonial `gaze`, the "pastoral tribes" made up of Joiyas, Bhatis, Lobana, Mohammadan Raths, etc., were viewed with deep suspicion, akin to ruthless marauders engaged in theft and looting.
Such has been the efficacy of this `gaze` that it has left a deep rooted prejudice vis-a-vis pastoralists/nomads in the official perception. So much so that even in post-colonial India, such attitudes have been further cultivated and rationalized through western anthropological `theories` such as the `tragedy of commons`
The RCP Deptt. in a important Report in 1984 states the bias thus :
This part of the desert is, therefore, a man-made desert caused by grazing leading to lack of vegetation and aridity. The extreme heat and coldness of the areas coupled with wind action over ages have caused desert through rock disintegration. Lack of water and vegetation due to over-grazing has turned this once fine land of abundance into desolate arid lands.
Way back in the 1890`s it was thought that the way to integrate pastoralism into an agrarian economy was possible through the chak patterns of settlement :
In order to provide for an increase in the cultivated area it was determined in exercise of State`s landlord right to the unoccupied waste to exclude from the boundaries of any village. Such waste area as was in excess of the requirements of that village for pasture and extension of cultivation. The areas so excluded which in many cases, owing to the scattered nature of cultivation, included greater or smaller number of occupied and cultivated fields were formed into blocks or chaks. Progressive assessments were fixed for these chaks, much in the same way as was done in the original villages, and it was determined to settle them with substantial cultivators from the adjacent districts of Hissar and Ferozepur and the cis-Sutlaj states.
[BSSR, P.J.Fagan, op. cit., 1893,p26]
The colonial state played to the hilt the `peasant instinct to colonize land` at the cost of, and even opposed to, other forms of land use such as prevailing in forests[ slash-`n-burn cultivation], rangelands, deserts, etc.; i.e., one pattern of land use has been made to prevail upon others as a matter of policy and subsequently, this has become the dominant form of land use along with its social relations. This has served an important additional purpose other than maximizing revenues, serving as a resource base for recruitment into the army.
The reasons of the state [raison d`etat] have not changed since the previous century and the display of subsequent moral-missionary zeal displayed during canal construction, after independence. They converged with World Bank policies and funding to extend the area under cultivation and zealously pursue the ideal of `the greening of the desert`. Chaks have continued to remain an efficient unit and index of such policies.
Why Collective Bargaining?
The resettlement policies of the Govt. backed by legislation and regulations [Colonization Act, Irrigation & Drainage Act, etc] for the IGNP areas induced a rapid growth of the land-market. This was also in the interest of the state, as the sole proprietor of land, established during the colonial period, to collect revenues from the `price of land`. Once a certain sum was fixed per unit [moraba] by the World Bank, the original allotees, the pre-1955 residents were virtually made to sell off their lands by corrupt means to state officials [from irrigation and colonization departments, CAD officials,etc.], thekedars , big landlords from the north and the land mafia [bhumafia]. Given the nature of the land most of the deals were speculative and coerced. Those for whom land was meant to be alloted turned out at the receiving end once they showed no inclination to part with it. Either they were subject to endless delays in their re-settlements [e.g. Pak Oustees] or they were cheated by allotment of `uncommand land`[ unirrigated land, mostly atop dunes] whose agricultural productivity was next to zero. As a result of all this, numerous conflicts erupted over the mode of payment in installments, the state`s right to collect kishts [installments] at whatever time and on the basis of a vaguely defined kishtbandi.
In fact, during the last quarter of 20th c., commodity-money economy around land markets operated in full swing with meager productive outlays and that too in the sphere of mechanized and chemical agriculture based on various forms of tenancies and share-cropping. This dynamic impacted very severely on traditional water harvesting and storage systems, gochars and orans [ traditional commons, pastures and forests], transhumant and migratory routes, khadins and other pre-industrial types of land use and farming and most importantly, communities based on specific activities[ e.g., pastoralists].Today their dwindling size, degraded status and neglected state tell a sad story.
The abandonment of traditional wisdom and knowledge without any alternative other than market driven chaos forces us to be in a position to kindle and generate a new consciousness for charting a future course. We also need to ask ourselves whether we are in a position to do so. What will be our measure of efficacy for the tasks set forth? We must take a hard look at ourselves as ask : what constitutes the we ?
The severe drought of 1999-2001 has inadvertently sharpened the focus onto the main problems in the region, as if it needed a severe crisis of this magnitude for things to come out in the open. What has primarily occurred in this period with unseen rapidity is what is known as the process of `de-peasantization` or, `proletarianization`, to put it in Marxist terms. Suddenly the ranks of wage-earners as well as demand for wage based employment has swelled beyond compare.
The main issue before us is the quantitative transformation and enlargement of rural wage employment. This sectoral expansion has introduced a new element, amounting to aqualitative transformation in social relations. There is tremendous pressure to bring the reserve `army of labour` or the huge unemployed sector into the ambit of wage relations. There is a considerable overlap now between the production relations in the rural areas and Industrial Relations. There is considerable scope therefore for the germination and expansion of the form and procedures of Collective Bargaining. IGNP areas are ideally situated to start a process in this direction. Having come to the fag end of internecine quarrelling, whether over water rights or the right demarcation of land boundaries, it is time now to leave them behind, as useless judicial baggage, and join hands in the form of Federation of Chak Samities. These Federations can be organized by a conglomeration of a number of Chak Samities which can further amalgamate at a higher level in the form of a Confederation. This form of organization will also strike deep roots of democracy and organize popular will which would be in a position to take on its adversaries at the local level. Each Federation can be the sole bargaining agency at the CAD level and they can seek mandates from the Panchayats at a more general level to take up a broader range of issues relating to common natural resources, gender issues, public health , education and so on. Such a mandate can be further used by the Confederation of Chak Samities at the highest level of negotiations, both with the World Bank and the Government of Rajasthan as well as the Government of India.
In the Bulletin we can only pose the question to start with. We are not here with ready made answers. Only a process of a deepening of understanding, organizing and struggles can lead us further along the path.
[1] Bulletin was a bi monthly newsletter of the Farmer Chak Samities of IGNP Stage II, supported by AZERC, URMUL Trust and OXFAM.
Situating cultural practices of marginal communities in India
"A radical demystification of the framework for culture necessitates asking questions like what constitutes and reinvigorates creativity as a community practice, how is it related not only to enhancing incomes and opening market opportunities but equally to notions of well being, dignity and happiness; what are the processes that need to be followed for integrating the voices of the rural creators in constituting decentralized and self sustaining cultural / creative industries that situate their existence not as subservient to the logics of elite perspectives and market but toperspectives of realization of self rooted in local tradition and community; what is the potential and legitimacy of the meanings inherent in the cultural practices of the rural creators in not only generating knowledge from below but embodying it to constitute and represent empowering processes and institutions; advocating for the inclusion of oral testimony and voices of the marginal in understanding and constituting development practices and policies; how can the reality of multiple options of the livelihoods cycle of the marginal communities in the rural areas be understood in a holistic manner to facilitate planning of interventions that have an integrative rather than a dissipative logic, trying to move away from simplistic ways of seeing reality of the marginal as divided into on farm and non-farm categories; how can the concepts of resilience, interdependence and diversity inherent in the holism of sustainable livelihoods approach be integrated into our development practice with reference to the marginal communities."
Read more and share on Marginal Cultural Practices and Sustainable Rural Livelihoods
Before I get down to the task of delineating issues for NGO Action in the context of the ‘drought conditions’ that engulf all the regions of western Rajasthan, it would not be inappropriate for me to devote some time on my understanding of this ‘crisis’. For, as would become clear, this definitely influences my delineation of the issues. Delineation of issues for action, to my mind, also carry the responsibility to think, reflect, discuss and debate. Perhaps we need to realize that as NGOs we have devoted far less time to these things that we ought to have. And it is clear that any discussion about the issues for action has to take into account, more than ever before, the long term.
In 2002, the spectre of a severe ‘drought’ started haunting the communities of western Rajasthan ever since the State declared the ‘failure of crops’ in it’s Girdawari Report for the rabi crop in May and the relief works in June-July.As the months have been passing in this unusually long and hot summers, the anticipated problems, because of the crisis apparently caused by the failure of monsoons in entire North India, have become issues of concern among the State, the Donors and the NGO development sector in western Rajasthan. Many, in western Rajasthan, are talking about possibly the worst drought in recent human memory here.
Whereas there is little disagreement about the pervasiveness of the crisis, there is definitely a conflict of opinions regarding the causal factors that lie behind these ‘drought conditions’. These differences in situating causes result in differing perceptions that determine the kind of issues one delineates for future action.
Read more....
Presentation at the NGO Desert Forum, Western Rajasthan, 2002-2003
Ghulam Mohammad Mir is from Pugal in Bikaner, who has learnt classical music as well for eight years in Bahawalpur, proudly says
“…this is the area of Sufiyayna qalam...this region has been blessed by one of the mort important Sufis, Khwaja Ghulam Farid who has spent considerable time of his life here and composed in the praise of the desert…our singing is different from the Sindh region…it has similarities with the Patiala and Sham Chaurasi Gharana of Punjab, exponents of which have sung immortal sufi qalam. In our tradition the most common ragas are Bhimpalasi, Malkauns and Multani Kafi…”
Expounding further on the tradition the regal old man tells that Ishq (love) was the first thing to be made by Allah when he created Muhammad. He then sang in his sonorous voice the ibtadayi baat (tale of the beginning) as is expressed in a qalam by Ali Haider. It talks of the primordial relationship between Ishq and gana (song) at a time when there was nothing else:
“Jadon Ishq wali bang mele saiya puchan laga kaun imam ha
Na nau kalam na kurshi arash
na zamin te na asmana
na macca mojij te na ganga tirath
na kufr te na Islam ha
Ali Haider mian
Jadon Ishq de hath wich ganajad Ishq he Ishq da Imam ha"
"when I heard the call of love
the beloved asked: what sort of Imam are you!
I said: neither of the earth nor the sky
nor frommiraculous places like macca or sacred pilgrimages like ganga
A morning bus from Bikaner traversing the slopes of the undulating road slithering through the yellow glistening desert for around two hours finally reaches Pugal, a village on the Indira Gandhi canal and an old mandi of considerable historical importance. As one approaches the Mirasi mohalla, the sound of music, loud and intense, reverberations of drums and lilting melodies on the bagpipe and the Algoza engulf the atmosphere. Passers by have been wondering if there is a marriage in one of the houses. The Mirs keep singing till late in the night, as if possessed. The mohalla with its narrow lanes and closely-huddled-up houses is full of activity and bears a look of exuberance and festivity. Children, women and men of all ages are excited. Around 20-odd Mir musicians from about seven villages around Pugal have come together to participate in a month long collective riyaz (practice) session. The sessions began in the last week of January, 2005 and continued till the end of March.
Yasin from Sattasar exclaims that this is the first time in so many years that they have got an opportunity to practice together. “Leave aside practicing as a team, even doing riyaz at an individual level has not been possible. The leisure and surplus it demands are out of reach for most of us,” adds Mohammad Saddiq from Ghulamwala. The crisis of livelihoods and resources in and around the scrawny command area of the Indira Gandhi canal has forced most of the Mir singers into abject poverty and destitution. The recurrent droughts in the 20th century have forced many to eke out their living as casual daily wage hunters in nearby mandis, towns and even as far as Bikaner city. Years of hardship and gruelling labour have flattened Waris Ali and Fattu Khan from becoming promising Mir musicians.
The Mirs more respectfully called Mir-i-Alam, have been the ecstatic singers of the Sufiyana kalam of Sufi mystics of northwest Indian sub-continent like Baba Bulle Shah, Hazrat Shah Hussain, Hazrat Sultan Bahu and Khwaja Ghulam Farid, the great wandering fakir of the blazing desert between Pugal and Multan whose compositions are vivid descriptions of the majestic serenity of the desert and blossoming of the pastoral landscape during brief spells of rains. In these interiors of the Thar desert the mehfils of Mir-i-Alam, during the urs at dargahs or auspicious occasions in households, have been the sole sources of entertainment and of soul-stirring mystical experience. This once-vibrant tradition of singing in Pugal has been waning over the last half-a-century. Decline of traditional patronage of the Rajputs and Muslim pastoralists, displacement of traditional livelihoods, degradation of natural common property resources- aggravated with the coming of the Indira Gandhi Canal since the late 1970s, are some of the main reasons. The Mirs have also been victims of bans, with several villages in the region boycotting them. These bans have been imposed by the orthodox maulvis, who regard singing of any sort as heretical. This has directly affected the livelihoods of the Mirs.
The interest shown in collective riyaz sessions displays the passion and perseverance of the Mir musicians to polish their tradition and bring it alive from the clutches of decay. Undeterred by adversity, the Mirs carry on with their ideological role of being marfat singers, moving from the high moments of ecstasy to detached serenity, a beautiful and tangential medium for intense mystical experiences. The quest for revival is also a quest to survive in the desert against all odds — to preserve their forgotten heritage.
Fattu Khan, whose father was an acclaimed Mir singer, sees a possibility of regaining his confidence to hone his hereditary musical skills. For budding singers like Basu Khan, the days of riyaz hold a promise of intense music sessions and an exposure to styles of singing many old kalam. Even the old ustads have cleared their throats to teach the new Mir singers the finer nuances of rendering Sufiyana kalam. Children have been enthusiastically participating in these sessions and are trying their hands at singing. The riyaz sessions have elicited positive response from listeners in the region; many have encouraged Mirs to continue their pursuit.
What began as a journey of discovering the power of their Sufiyana tradition by Mukthiyar Ali and Abdul Jabbar around two years ago is now the collective striving of many musicians of theMir community. The collective riyaz session is part of a fellowship given to Mukhtiyar and Abdul by the Bangalore-based India Foundation for the Arts for reinvigorating the Sufiyana kalam tradition in the Pugal region. Hope and passion keep these subaltern musicians endeavouring to revive their Sufiyana tradition : a tradition that sings of love, compassion and harmony.
The article first appeared in Tehelka, May 13 , 2006
Western Rajasthan comprises the major portion of the region called the Indian Thar. Life in the Thar is an endless struggle and persistent negotiation with the fragile and harsh ecology. Shifting sand dunes, high wind velocities and very deep, scarce and saline water sources have always posed a formidable challenge to sustained human settlement here. Yet it is one of the few arid regions in the world that has the oldest histories of human settlement and is the most thickly populated among all the deserts.
The long history of the Thar has been the story of migrations impelled by famines, feuds, political turmoil and an incessant search to set up new settlements and colonise new tracts. These patterns of mobility, over long time periods, have bequeathed to the region, among other things, highly resilient folk craft traditions and a diverse group of communities as active bearers of these.The Indian Thar is known for it’s rich and diverse heritage of craft and handicraft traditions. Whether it is weaving, carpentry, woodwork, pottery, terracotta, tie and dye, hand printing, carving, embroidery, basket making, braiding, leather work, stone work, lac work, metal work etc., to name a few of the salient craft traditions, all have one thing in common – an exuberance, vigor and a desire to celebrate life.It is as if the monotony of survival in this vastly stretched landscape has been rendered sublime with exquisitely crafted handmade objects. Robust, well marked compositions using bright colours and intricate patterns stand out is sharp contrast to the sandy backdrop.As if human creativity and imagination have prevailed over drudgery and suffering.
It was only after the Independence that the need to redefine and rediscover a status for the crafts was keenly felt, and, slowly, agencies for promotion of crafts were established by the Indian Government. The first and second five-year plans, with their concerns about the fading of craft traditions in the face of modernization, saw the beginning of various projects and institutions for the promotion of crafts. However in the context of western Rajasthan, a region that remained on the periphery, these protective measures by the State had a limited impact.
In western Rajasthan, for many of these crafts, the growth of markets was associated with the tourism coming to in the late seventies. Different rural crafts made their entry into the tourist markets as well as into the tourist / export market that has piggy ridden on the circuit of desert festivals and fairs in the Thar.
Though the extent of benefits from the tourist trade to the craftspeople remains debatable. Equally important for the expansion of the export trade have been factors like easy access to cheap labour in the villages as a result of a growing poverty, destitution, loss of traditional skills and crisis of livelihoods among the craftspeople.
The other important wage providers for craftspeople were the Khadi units, especially those associated with spinning yarn and weaving. But the Khadi units were proving fairly restrictive both in terms of coverage of craftspeople and choice of handicrafts. These units were mostly targeting villages nearby to cities or only localities within towns and were not able to reach out to craftspeople in far-flung villages. And even the wage payments to craftspeople by these units, with their heavy dependence on Govt. subsidy, lack of innovative strategies to capture markets, conservative biases against new trends in designs, etc. contributed to stagnation in the long run.
These were some of the issues that impelled the NGOs, including URMUL Trust, to work for the crafts and the craftspeople in the Thar.
URMUL Trust Perspective
URMUL [Uttari Rajasthan Milk Union Limited], was set up in the arid region of Bikaner district, with the URMUL dairy acting professionally as the district unit of Rajasthan State Dairy Federation. Milk procurement, which began with just 200 litres in 1972, rose to 1,50,000 litres a day in 1984.In 1985, the dairy cooperative gave a mandate to the URMUL Trust to start a rural health service for it’s members. The Founder Secretary of the Trust is Mr. Sanjoy Ghose.
The URMUL Trust today is a family of nine organizations working towards the social and economic betterment of people in the harsh, inhospitable and underdeveloped region of Western Rajasthan. Activities vary according to the needs and situation of the specific area, and include health, education, on farm and off farm income generation, research, policy and public advocacy. Some work styles and principles are common across the family. These include honesty, secularism, gender sensitivity and a faith in the capacity of the rural people to devise and manage development programmes. All the work is focussed on the poorer and marginalized sections of the society, and is planned and implemented with the support and participation of the community.
Before taking a closer look at the URMUL perspective it would not be inappropriate to devote some time to understand the context in which the URMUL Trust perspective took roots and continues to take shape.
Sustainable Livelihoods and Quality of Life
One factor that shaped the perspective of the URMUL Trust in Western Rajasthan towards handicrafts has been the challenge to create ‘sustainable livelihoods’ for poor and socially backward groups in the face of widespread scarcity due to recurrent droughts.‘Sustainable livelihoods’ in short mean livelihoods that not only bring higher incomes but are owned and managed by the community as well. Most often they are in tune with the ecology of the region. It is to be emphasized that the interventions by the URMUL Trust were aimed not merely at augmenting incomes but also aimed to bring about a change at a deeper level of consciousness.
Interventions in the craft sector began with the drought cycle of 1986-87. In a peripheral region like the Thar, investing in the development of new enterprises meant training communities in new ‘vocational’ skills; making capital investments of a magnitude that were outside the purview of the development mandate of the URMUL Trust. Then there was the intrinsic commitment towards the skills that the communities already had.
This commitment for the ‘local / traditional’ skills of the community had ‘aesthetic’ undertones as well.The pioneers of the URMUL Trust had internalized the message from the craft renaissance movement in the country quite well. So, in working with rural livelihoods, primary importance was to be given to protecting the rich heritage of the handicrafts as well as the craftspeople.
URMULDesert Crafts: Journeys in Sand and Time
In this section I briefly recount the different journeys of each of the major independent initiatives of the URMUL Desert Crafts.
A Brief Romance with Wool
Bikaner’s legacy of raw wool production and of being Asia’s largest raw wool market determined the ‘choice’ of the beginning of the handicraft production in the URMUL Trust.
Spinning yarn on the spinning wheel (Charkha) by women was already a fairly established intervention for rural employment, especially during periods of drought relief. To face the challenge of the
drought of 1986-87, URMUL Trust too made a similar beginning. Raw wool was given for spinning to women in the villages of Lunkaransar as a drought relief intervention. But to the surprise and utter dismay of URMUL Trust, the Khadi units in Bikaner refused to buy the spun yarn. And the spun yarn filled the large training centre at Lunkaransar. An impasse was reached. What would one do with this large quantity of wool yarn for which there were no takers.
A ‘chance meeting with an itinerant trader’ from the Bhojasar village in Phalodi, Jodhpur brought hope and vigour in the quest for promoting craft based livelihoods. The ‘fruits of loom’ could be now realized. It was decided to call weavers from Phalodi to fashion out products from this yarn as well as train new weavers.
We Weave Therefore We Are: URMUL Marusthali Bunkar Vikas Samiti
These weavers from Phalodi after a brief stint in Lunkaransar wanted to form an organization of their own, back home in Phalodi. URMUL Trust realized that their ‘going back to the native villages’ was quite in tune with the development vision of decentralization and self- sufficiency of the community. As a result, URMUL Marusthali Bunkar Vikas Samiti (UMBVS) was established in 1991 as a registered society of weavers. The weavers who formed UMBVS, acknowledge with gratitude the initial training and confidence they got at the Lunkaransar campus of the URMUL Trust, where they learnt the basics of production, dyeing, marketing, account and stock
keeping.
As of today, the Samiti has its headquarters at Phalodi, Jodhpur district. Apart from the office at Phalodi there is a dyeing cum weaver training centre and a showroom, Kashida, at Pokharan, Jaisalmer.
The Bunkar Samiti has within its ambit about 170 weavers, spread in 10 villages. They together produce and sell nearly Rs. 4.5 million worth of garments and soft furnishing items each year. Women, who did not find a place in traditional weaving activity except as adjuncts, occupy a special place within UMBVS.About 20 weavers are women. And 30% of a weaver’s earning goes in his wife’s name – a recognition of her role in the production process. Moreover women form ten percent of the membership of UMBVS.
The setting up of the organization in the Phalodi region was not easy. All the weavers elonged to the Meghwal community who were regarded as untouchables by the other higher castes in the village. This reaction from the higher castes as well as the dynamics within the weaver community had to be negotiated in this struggle to carve out a different ‘ide
ntity’.
Then there were modifications to be done in the traditional craft repertoire to suit it to the urban markets. Pattu weaving on the pit loom was their traditional craft skill. The word pattu is derived from Patti that literally means a narrow strip of cloth
. These pattus were traditionally woven in two pieces and then stitched together laterally. And they were woven from wool.After years of experimentation with the fabric, col
our and designs, UMBVS could perfect a product range that was stunning and able to capture the urban markets, both in India as well as abroad. Today the product range comprises of soft furnishings, bags, kurtas, shawls, stoles, jackets and table mats.
Blending tradition with modern taste the weavers have succeeded in securing much better incomes for the poor families. The looms are busy again. But the story of the weavers’ cooperative does not end with captivating designs, colours and motifs.
In 1994 when a severe malaria epidemic had caused widespread misery, the UMBVS decided not to restrict their services only to its weaver members but expanded its mandate to work with the poor and marginalized in the villages of its project area. Since then, UMBVS has made its mark as a grass root NGO committed towards the poor and the marginalized, especially the Dalits and the women.
UMBVS works in over 90 villages in the Jodhpur and Jaisalmer districts. For its rural development initiatives the UMBVS has been able to organise support from many reputed international donor agencies as well as the state and the central governments. It runs more than two dozen schools and non-formal education centers. Various development activities like watershed development, land leveling, dam bunding, tree plantation; forming men and women savings and credit groups; health related issues like immunisation of children, emergency referral services, TB control are run with the participation and involvement of the village community. Whether it is a deadly epidemic of malaria, fire, flash floods or recurrent droughts UMBVS is at the forefront in providing emergency relief.
The experience of UMBVS as an organization of weavers raises some important questions regarding the balance between development services provider as an NGO and a handicraft business unit owned by a weavers’ cooperative.
Refashioning Embroideries: URMULSeemant Samiti
The Indo-Pak war of 1971 had resulted in a mass exodus from Pakistan. Thousands crossed over from the Thar Parkar district (Sind) to the neighboring districts of western Rajasthan (especially Barmer) and Kutch in Gujarat. Before they were given Indian citizenship these families were huddled as refugees in the relief camps in the Barmer district. Many of the women among them were deft embroiderers. With the help a few enterprising men in the community some of them started producing embroidery for sale in the market as a coping strategy.Some traders saw a potential in this trade and began advancing capital through middlemen for embroidery production. These middlemen kept a close control over the production processes by women who were anyway tied to the camps. Therein began a mass production of embroidery that soon spread to include women from other communities. Even today it is one of the most popular livelihoods for women in the Barmer district. What originated as a coping strategy for survival in the refugee camps has become one of the popular livelihood strategies for all.
In the beginning of 1980s these Pak refugees were rehabilitated by the Indian Government. Some of them were allotted land in the canal area of the IGNP canal in the Bikaner district. Over a period of five to six years (from 1981 to 1987), the community shifted gradually from Barmer district to the canal areas in Bajju and Pugal in the Bikaner district. The middlemen and petty producers of embroidery followed them. In a ‘new’ context when they had been given low agricultural lands and had nothing much to do for survival, doing embroidery for old contacts from Barmer was fairly consoling.
The URMUL Trust had started working in the new canal area in the Bajju region in 1990. Working by the name of URMUL Seemant Samiti, an autonomous initiative of the Trust, one of the main objectives was to support income generation activities for both men and women in the new command area of the IGNP canal.
Sustained employment for women, higher wages, reducing exploitation by the middlemen and promotion of the craft of embroidery were some of the main objectives of the programme.
Efforts began in 1990 with a training programme funded by DRDA for 20 women of Sheruwala village. In 1992-93 a grant for a CraftDevelopmentCenter by DCH provided the much need infrastructure consolidation. Now the organization could reach out to more women, had space to hold meetings, stock its production, as well as display intricate embroidery creations of women, etc. Another 44 women from the villages of Bandhali, Bijeri and Dandkalan joined the project making a total of 64 women. Dastkar a craft organization, consistently provided design support to the producers for 10 days a month for two years. In 1993, 20 embroiderers from 2DO joined making the total to now 84. In 1995, 42 women from 2AD, 1BD chaks joined. And in 1998, 53 women in three more groups joined making the total membership of the embroidery programme to 179 women. However 42 women from three villages of Sheruwala, Bijeri and Bandhli left the project after working for 5 to 6 years. Most of them were from the Rajput caste and men in their society did not approve of the women leaving their homes whatsoever.
With a consistent interaction with professional designers, the women embroiderers were able to achieve high quality standards in embroidery in Suf and Pacca styles. Here it is to be remarked that many women in the unit are low caste Meghwals, who are traditionally the deft embroiderers. Even the product range of the Unit diversified from cushion covers to include garments, tops, salwar kurtas, soft furnishings, accessories like bags, pouches, belts and caps, etc.
At present around 300 women from 8 villages are employed. Although most of the women are Meghwals, there are women also from the Rajput, Jat castes. The sale in the last two years has been good, around Rs. 35-40 lakhs.
The Seemant embroidery unit faces the challenge of how to hand over to the women the control of production, marketing and most of the other activities of the Unit. It is to be remarked here that the approach adopted by Seemant to make the women autonomous controllers is that of organizing them into Self Help Groups (SHG). SHGs are definitely encouraging the women to pool savings, organize credit to some extent but have been found wanting on questions of undertaking marketing.
In the overall context of a the context of a weak command area having very little or no promise for agriculture and in the absence of other livelihoods, organizing women groups to do embroidery over long consistent periods has been as achievement. What started as a venture for supplementary incomes has become a full-fledged livelihood option in it’s own right. But the sad thing is that embroidery till today is not recognized by Khadi Board or the Government as a wage-earning livelihood under drought relief schemes.
Organising Livelihood for Weavers: the promise of Vasundhara Gramothan Samiti
One of the outcomes of the efforts for the creation of livelihoods among craftspeople as a response to the drought of
1987 was the formation of UMBVSin Phalodi. The other was a continued effort with artisans in Lunkaransar. This resulted in the formation of Vasundhara Gramothan Samiti in 1991. When formed, Vasundhara had a very different challenge to meet. That of training unskilled casual wage workers into weavers.
Initially for some years till 1994, the Unit was managed by the URMUL Trust. In this brief but quite eventful period URMUL Trust invested in the capacity building of almost every aspect of Vasundhara as an organization like design development, undertaking production in the villages, interactions with the weavers, stock and account keeping, marketing, etc. In 1994, the management of Vasundharawas handed over to the weavers under the leadership of a Governing Board that had representatives of weavers from Lunkaransar.
The beginnings were made by an NID graduate who painstakingly worked with the dyers and the weavers on TARA looms. The production was limited to plain and striped fabric, to begin with. After a few years of cloth production, stitched garment were introduced. One of the traditional crafts that has existed in the region is the weaving of cots and low stools called pidhas. A wooden frame with a seat woven in geometric patterns using either cotton yarn or goat hair, form the pidha. Product diversification, replacing wood with metal, was introduced. But has not proved to be of much use.Now there are only 5 pidha makers left in the unit.
Efforts are also on to try different combinations of materials. There has been some headway achieved in combining jute with fabric to fashion out attractive bags. This has provided the opportunity for some women weavers to become part of Vasudhara. But availability of jute as a raw material still remains a constraint to be overcome. Some effort has also been made towards combining leather with fabric to fashion out bags.
Unfortunately, the Unit has been prone to ups and downs of the rural resource economy. In a drought year many of its ‘weavers’ would migrate to the canal areas to work as agricultural workers and in a good year many would give preference to sowing their agricultural lands than sitting on looms.
As of today Vasundhara’s strength is the fabric yardage. The central team has deft dyers who impart attractive colour shades to the plain fabric. The addition of old trained weavers from one village has strengthened the team. The Unit works in around six villages and has around 48 weavers of which 28 are men and 18 are women. Apart from that there are around 14 women dhurrie weavers who have been part of the Vasundhara team ever since its inception. Maintaining an average annual sale of around Rs. 30 lakhs in the past few years, the Samiti is steadily progressing towards its promise of organising livelihoods.
Fate of leather workers: from Abhay Anusthan to CharmkarVikas Samiti
URMUL Trust’s growing expertise in supporting craftspeople led to a search for new regions and communities. The Regars in Sikar had been traditionally been into making footwear. They were experts in doing embroidery on leather mojadis. Majority of them worked for showrooms in cities around and the footwear market in Punjab. The costs and risks of individual manufacturing and defects relating to quality and maintaining standards were problems that they used to face.
A tie up with an NGO (Abhay Anusthan) in Sikar led to work with leather artisans in the 1995. The Regars were given an exposure to institutes like Footwear Design and Development Institute and CLRI to provide them training in tanning as well as footwear design. To revive traditional processes of tanning leather, a tanning unit was established.
Originally the project started with an objective of training around 100 artisans but then finally it limited itself to just a few villages and 25 artisans.
Everything had started working fine, but the Regars had to pay a price for strained relations between Abhay Anusthan and the URMUL Trust. The dispute between the two NGOs finally resulted in an abrupt end of the Sikar leather project.
But the Regars were determined to liberate themselves from the older constraints. Many of them had imbibed their lessons on benefits of collective organization. Some of them did not loose hope and maintained links with the URMUL Trust office at Bikaner. From one of the main villages of the erstwhile leather project, Pachar, the Regars have got together to form a registered society of their own – Charmkar Vikas Samiti.
Charmkar Vikas Samiti is an organization of leather workers formed in quite a different way than most other URMUL Trust groups mentioned above. Handholding support to the craftspeople was withdrawn rather prematurely. Still with the efforts of the URMUL Trust Coordination Unit, the leather workers have been able to participate in some craft exhibitions in Delhi. But they are surely the ones who need support in terms of designs and markets.
Exploring the frontier: Srajamyaham
For some colleagues within the Trust the desire to work in Jaisalmer was an unfulfilled challenge from the initial days. Jaisalmer had first emerged on the map of URMUL Trust during drought relief interventions as a response to the drought of 1987.
A craft documentation study proposed work on livelihoods of women. This was followed by the choice of embroidery. Beginning of work in five villages of the Devikot area in Sam was made in 1998. Interestingly, work was taken up with the Pak refugee women of the 1971 war. Since most of the women were from the Rajput and Brahmin community, they had a limited skill of embroidery. So around two years were spent in skill enhancement efforts. A professional designer was involved at the initial stage of the skill enhancement process. Instead of duplicating the creations of the skilled traditional embroiderers of Bajju, it was decided to work towards the creation of a different collection. The product range includes tops, jackets, soft furnishings, bags, and items like key rings, wrist bands, etc.
Being a new initiative working with ‘newly’ trained craftspeople, it needs some more time before anything distinct can emerge.
Forging Ties: Abhivyakti Showroom & the URMULDesert Crafts Mela
To tap the increasing tourist traffic in Bikaner, as well as explore possibilities of retail selling, URMUL Trust opened a retail outlet in Bikaner in 1991. The Rajmata, Chairman of Maharaja Rai Singh Trust, kindly agreed to rent out a small outlet to URMUL Trust at a very nominal rent in the Junagarh fort premises. Pattus, bed spreads, table linen, etc from Phalodi; garments, woolen jackets, dhurries, pidhas, from Vasundhara; cushion covers, bags, caps from Seemant; mojadisrohida wood and red sandstone pillars was an expression of collectivity, a representation of URMUL Desert Crafts. from Sikar all could be found under one roof. The small shop with its antique ceiling of
Abhivyakti (expression), as the showroom was called became a window of URMUL’s work with the artisans to the tourists coming to Junagarh. It got a mention in the popular and authentic Lonely Planet travel guide, and as a result Abhivyakti became known to every tourist coming to Bikaner.
Around 2001, the one of the members of the royal family of Bikaner wanted to open a museum in the Junagarh fort. To make room for it, Abhivyakti was driven away. The shop was relocated at the National Centre for Camel Research farm in Jorbeer that was at the outskirts of the city. Abhivyakti lost most of its charm and disappeared from the URMUL Trust crafts scene. Although URMUL Trust has got in place a new showroom building at URMUL Bhawan but that has yet to be started.
The other important marketing initiative URMUL Trust organises is the URMUL Desert Crafts MelaDelhi. An annual event since 1996, barring a gap of few years, it has been a unique initiative among the NGOs. Over the years it has helped to build a brand image and a market for URMUL Crafts products in Delhi. It has facilitated linkages with the export market. For the craftspeople, the Mela is an opportunity to participate in the marketing process as well as to interact with urbanites having a passion for rural crafts. URMUL Mela, unlike any other exhibition, is their own show. Many women crafts persons who live a veiled existence back in the villages have had the opportunity to directly interact with the appreciators of their crafts. It is an emotive moment for the entire URMUL Trust family. The Mela is a sort of reaffirmation rite of the collective bond in front of the outside world. in
Conclusions
The experience of the URMUL Trust amply demonstrates the viability of crafts as livelihood generation opportunities in a region with such a restricted scope for livelihoods. URMUL Trust in it’s decade and a half journey has covered a lot of ground in creating livelihoods for the marginal craftspeople in the Thar. In the URMUL Trust model the craftspeople have been beneficiaries of different essential development services ranging from health and education to even awareness. The vision has been one of changing lives of the artisans going beyond merely providing higher wages.
As the case studies of different URMUL craft initiatives shows, the development of each has been specific to the organizational context. The same could be said of the status of the craftspeople and their wages too. Some handicraft units like UMBVS and Semmant Samiti have started by organizing old, skilled traditional craftspeople. Here good quality standards have been adhered to. These units have not only given a new life to the traditional skills but have also imparted a dignity to the craftsperson that was conspicuously absent in the ‘traditional’ context. Units like Vasundhara and Srajamyaham had to start with the challenge of imparting skills, be it weaving or embroidery, to begin with. These units have been slow to pick up and have been more prone to fluctuations.
After all this has been said, there are some limitations that need to be mentioned here. The Trust, apart from spelling out a few rudimentary principles of working with the craftspeople has failed to evolve a coherent policy regarding working with craftspeople. As a result there is quite a disparity in standards. If on the one hand there is UMBVS aspiring to participate in international exhibitions on the other hand is the Charmkar Vikas Samiti struggling for a working capital of a couple of thousands to attend the Crafts Bazaar in Delhi.
A more focused and integrated approach by the government and design institutions would help NGOs like URMUL Trust to transcend their limitations as NGOs to support handicrafts and craftspeople. Although support by DCH has been very helpful in strengthening the craft initiatives, it would be more meaningful if DCH played a more pro-active role at the policy level. Be it selection of craft based livelihood interventions as drought relief measures, constituting a fair wage regime that adheres to minimum wages standards; or hand holding support to autonomous initiatives of artisans; or creating a suitable mechanism for accessing global markets, the DCH could help transform the overall climate of NGO development interventions regarding handicrafts.
Similarly, design institutes like the NID could support the cause by formulating a more organized and consistent process of design support with feedback processes from the NGOs as well as the craftspeople. And it would be very beneficial to artisan groups if these services could be accessed at the State level through a ‘pool’ of design professionals.
