The Resurging Value of Civil Society for Indian Crafts
Riyaz Ansari was born in the year 1965, and into the profession of weavers; a community which is dying, starving, and moving away in hopes of a better tomorrow. Riyaz Ansari’s home is only one in a small colony of weavers who do identical work and earn identical wages; two hundred rupees a day for weaving threads into fabric. She is also only one of the weavers in a family of five weavers. Her fate and her story is only one of the many identical tales you will hear over a cup of tea in the congested and neglected streets of Saidanpur, Barabanki.
The door to their home was also left open as I peeked inside. I saw a family busy with spinning threads. I knocked twice and a young boy came to greet me. I introduced myself and asked if anyone would be kind of enough to speak to me about their professions. A few minutes later, I was greeted by an older woman who wasn’t friendly but also not averse to my presence. If I had to describe it, I would say she was tired of talking to people like me, people who did not understand the struggle of daily wage labor, people who maybe held the promise of some change, people she knew she had to talk to, but unsure if she would ever experience any real improvement in her conditions.
“Riyaz Ansari is my name.” She had been weaving clothes since she was a young girl. Her parents did this. Her husband did this. Her husband’s parents did this. She taught her children how to do this. If times did not change, they would teach their children to do this. I asked why she had not sent her children to school. She told me that she had lost her husband thirteen years ago. Her husband’s family had estranged her and left her to fend for her five children and herself. Her children were still young, she could not afford to send them to school.
For the household to stay afloat, the children had to learn the craft of weaving. As her children grew older, they were taught how to run the loom and how to weave. Two of her older sons had moved to Mumbai. One was unmarried and the other married. The daughter-in-law and their toddler Alisha stayed in Saidanpur while the father stayed in dismal conditions in Mumbai trying to save the most of the money he made to send it back home. That entire colony is home to the Ansari caste; weavers by profession. The story of Riyaz is the story of every household, stuck in this vicious cycle of poverty. As I was walking through the narrow lanes, the houses appeared to be spilling into each other, I was called into another household. This home belonged to Atif. Atif is a beneficiary of Digital Empowerment Foundation. I inquired about his relationship with the organization and he started telling me about his journey with DEF.
He told me that he had been invited to the Taj at Lucknow for the inauguration event of Bank-e-Loom and that he had also been offered a computer-based job but he was unable to keep and eventually returned back home. He had worked on orders that came from Digikargha and so had Zubair, another beneficiary of DEF. They both informed that their usual daily income was Rs. 300 and there was no guarantee when they would receive it. Their current employment system was completely in the hands of master-weavers who took products from them and were in charge of sales. The machines that they had and the raw material like the tread they use were supplied by the master-weaver. Hence, they had no capital of their own. Recently a master weaver had distributed power looms in the colony. He had yet not told what daily wage the weaver would receive. In contrast to this, when employed in
Digikargha projects the weavers worked on per-fixed rates that ranged around Rs. 500 which was considerably better than their daily wage. Digikargha is an initiative that uses the digital platform to take products from the weavers and sell it to the customers directly and DEF does not take any profit from this.
DEF has also helped the weavers receive e-governance benefits. Atif had stopped me to voice his concerns regarding a government scheme ‘Bunkar card’. A few months ago DEF had visited the colony of weavers with a government official to help the weavers get the aforementioned card. However at that time the weavers had declined as they did not see a need for it. Now, there was some new information that the ‘bunkar card’ might create electricity subsidies for the weavers. This is extremely important because the power looms use a lot of electricity and most of the money that weavers make goes into the electricity bill. So the Barabanki District Coordinator is coordinating with the government official to help the weavers get Bunkar cards. The biggest concern raised about Digikargha was that there weren’t enough orders. Orders came sporadically hence they couldn’t depend on the income. On inquiring further about what could help them break the cycle of poverty, the weavers responded that they were trying to break this generational cycle of poverty by sending their children to school. Zubair was investing
money into his younger sister’s education, encouraging her to get a BA and look for jobs after. No one expressed any interest in leveraging this generational skill into a sound business and that was because of the lack of capital. The weavers did not own the means of production, they could not sell or produce the product as this would require hefty investments. The power loom came with its set of struggles. It was a heavy machinery hence it required a lot of humanpower. Zubair’s wife said “At night, I cannot sleep, that is how much my body hurts.” For more than half
of the day, Saidanpur faces power cuts meaning the weavers cannot work. The power loom is also expensive to purchase and maintain. And perhaps the biggest struggle of having a power loom is the space that it takes. None of the weavers voiced it as a concern and perhaps they did not see it as one however these looms required a lot of space. The majority of the living area was occupied by these looms leaving little room for the inhabitants.
In the digital literacy program that is run at the Smartpur Hub center at Saidanpur, I met three boys who were learning Excel. All three of them came from weaver households and they were learning Excel for potential data entry jobs in Kuwait. Someone in their village had told them about the data entry job that would help them earn Rs. 41,000/month in Kuwait and the same person would help them get a visa. A few others from the village had gone to become truck drivers or delivery boys in Kuwait so that they could send money back home. The boys hope to do the same so that their family can live a better life.
The weaver community needs an ecosystem change. Plagued with poverty, their challenges are mutli-faceted. They do not live in finished homes rather tin roofs that cannot shelter them from rain, walls that are unplastered and rooms that cannot house their big families. The reason? They often spend most of their saved income on health costs. “We can take our children out of their schools but we cannot let them die.” The weaver community needs access to education, healthcare, capital, government schemes and most importantly an option to either exit the profession or find a way to make a sustainable living out of it.
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