The Indian Thar and Craft Traditions
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
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
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.
URMUL Desert
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
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
A ‘chance meeting with an itinerant trader’ from the Bhojasar village in Phalodi, Jodhpur
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
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
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
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: URMUL Seemant Samiti
The Indo-Pak war of 1971 had resulted in a mass exodus from Pakistan 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 Bikaner
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 Craft Development Center
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 UMBVS in 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 Vasundhara was 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 Charmkar Vikas 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
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
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 URMUL Desert
To tap the increasing tourist traffic in Bikaner , as well as explore possibilities of retail selling, URMUL Trust opened a retail outlet in Bikaner
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
The other important marketing initiative URMUL Trust organises is the URMUL Desert Crafts MelaDelhi Delhi
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.
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Rahul Ghai, February 2003
Programme Advisor
Arid Zone Environmental Research Centre, URMUL Trust, (Photo Credits: URMUL Trust Archives)
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