"Bhai, tension nahin lene ka bhai" we
have heard 'Circuit' saying very fondly to "Munnabhai" in the movie
"Munnabhai MBBS". (Brother-there is no need to be tensed)
As I said in my last post , Handwoven textiles
have the potential to be fabric of future - in shorter runs and as bespoke
products. Powerlooms and Mills don't stand a chance in this space. So,
"Bhai, tension nahin lene ka bhai."
In this post, I will talk about one of the
questions raised in last post "Was Indian craftsmanship always bad?"
India's love affair in experimenting different
versions of clothing is as old as civilization itself. Not only luxurious fabric
was handwoven but there were strict policies for weaving defect free. Weavers
earned good remuneration and PAID taxes.
In the annals of history of India the travel
accounts of Fasiyan, Huan Tsang, Warthima, Bernier, Garriri, Tavernier, General
Ormi and Marcopolo spelt out the glory of the handloom industry in the by-gone
days.
Wilson
(1979) writes
The
Greeks with Alexander the Great wrote of the fine flowered muslins and robes
embroidered in gold they had seen in India.The Arthasastra gave the penalties
for fraudulent practices and listed the taxes to be paid by weavers.
Writers
proclaimed on the sheerness of Dacca muslins, called evening dew, running
water, or sweet-like-sherbert. Seventy-three yards, a yard wide, weighed only
one pound. By comparison, the finest Swiss cottons ever made were at best
sixteen or seventeen yards to the pound.
The fineness of the hand woven fabrics were such
that poets of the Mughal durbar likened muslins to baft hawa (woven air), abe
rawan (running water) and shabnam (morning dew).
Shashi
Tharoor, in his book Era of Darkness writes "Her textile goods-the fine
products of her looms, in cotton, wool, linen and silk-were famous over the
civilized world"
According
to historian Nick Robinson, Indian textiles made up the bulk of the Company’s
trade by the 1680s. In 1684, for example, they comprised 83% of the Company’s total
trade amounting to some 17 lakh million pieces of cloth, which came from as far
afield as the Coromandel Coast, Bengal and Gujarat.
Daniel Defoe who described how
"everything that used to be made of wool or silk, relating to either the
dress of women or the furniture of houses, was supplied by the India
trade".
And it is not just handwoven textile but other
handcrafts also which were admired.
Referring to one of the India made craft
jewellery, the anklets used by peasant women at Bundi in Rajasthan state of
India, during a lecture in 1901, Sir T. Wardle wrote: “I bought for a few annas a bronze chain anklet, but all cast in one
mould together, quite a common thing, but so wonderfully made that one of our
best foundry owners told me he did not think anyone could do it in Europe”
These examples definitely illustrate that Indian
Craftsmanship was not just good but exemplary.
What has gone wrong?
We all understand that ways of doing business have
transformed many folds. Technology, particularly, internet has revolutionized
the methods of business communication. Businesses which responded and worked in
sync with these changes have flourished.
For Artisans, we never had a specialized business
or a design school. Knowledge has always been passed on verbally and through
on-loom practice from one generation to other. With changing business
environment, ability of artisans and their market interfaces have remained
limited.
While there is no denial that entire craft sector
is reeling under pressure from cheap goods made by machines, it’s equally true
that misgivings attribute to the way artisans and their market interfaces have
responded to the changing circumstances.
Broadly speaking, three market interfaces have
worked of the weavers
1.
Master Weavers: Despite all the
criticism, master weavers have played a very important role in providing market
linkages and credit support to weavers. However with changing business
environment and rapid entry of powerlooms, they are not equipped to fulfill the
role with same rigor and attention as they did in past.
a.
For instance, in an attempt to compete with
products made by power-looms and mills master weavers have started pushing
artificial fibers like nylon and polyester to handloom weavers , even in places
like Varanasi which are considered to be Mecca of Handlooms.
b.
With artificial fibers making inroads,
entire ecosystem of handloom weavers which include pre-loom and post-loom
service providers has started vanishing into cities as security guards and
migrant laborers.
c.
Adding further blow, master weavers in
all major weaving clusters have started using napthol based dyes to give their
sarees machine like finish and shine.
d.
Ramifications of these actions have
been far and wide. Weaving wages have gone down further. In order to earn a
daily living from the decreasing wages, weavers, as a result, minimized
experimenting with new designs and have started looking for large orders in one
similar design.
e.
In this price war, weavers have
forgotten that machines can very easily copy simple designs and weave volumes
at fraction of the cost. As a result, weavers, particularly younger ones no
longer find association with the pride of past and income of the present. It doesn’t require chip on the shoulder to
imagine the situation when younger generation hasn’t learnt from elderly and in
next two decades elderly masters will not be around.
2.
Collectives and Apex Federations: In
the larger policy dialogue, producer collectives are ‘assumed’ to be the
solution for all primary producers. Logically speaking, economies of scale and
scope have yielded bargaining power to the primary producers and coupled by
value addition and professional marketing, dairy and sugarcane cooperatives
have done what private sector couldn’t do.
a.
However unlike dairy and sugarcane
collectives, where milk or sugar is a commodity and with value addition and
professional management, viable producer-marketing collectives have been
formed, crafts are, verily, quite varied and distinct.
b.
Each craft and each cluster for a
particular craft requires different intervention. This is the key reasons why
apex collectives in crafts, barring exceptions, couldn’t reach a commercial
viability, despite years of dedicated efforts by government and civil society.
3.
Not-for-profit Organizations:
Excellent organizations like Dastkar Andhra, Rehwa Society, WomenWeave, Khamir,
RangaSutra and so on and so forth have worked with weavers ‘collectively’ on
the aforementioned problems and have created commercially viable, equitable and
fair handloom textile businesses.
a.
However if we look at the number of
artisans, requirement is humungous. And
if we ice it with the fact that young generation is drifting away from the
handloom sector, problem becomes terrifying.
b.
It will be unfair to assume and expect that
these not-for-profit organizations should engage and work with all weaver
collectives or act as umbrella collective for weavers everywhere and anywhere.
Also it is nearly impossible to create replicas of these organizations as each
organization has a different context and a different group of passionate
individuals who took this activity as their life mission.
We are standing at a critical juncture. Having
acknowledged that going forward master weavers will have limited role, producer
collectives will have limited bandwidth and we cannot have likes of DA and WW
at all locations, we need to experiment an alternative model.
Actions taken up now will decide whether after two
decades we will continue to witness the sound of shuttle being thrown left and
right on the handlooms in India. Arresting this drift of artisans, particularly younger ones, essentially calls for a paradigm shift in making craft based
livelihoods not just remunerative but also a respectable vocation. Easier said
than done, this requires comprehensive approach cognizant to geographical and
craft specific needs. The approach should ideally establish the connect between
pride of the past with income of the present
Disquieting implications indeed, visible to all
the hoi-polloi, but with no quick solutions!
But as I said in the beginning - "Bhai, tension nahin lene ka bhai" .
Handloom has some core strengths and it high time to play the game with those core strengths to make it Fabric of the Future.
