Life hangs on a silken thread
For hundreds of Bodo women in Assam who migrate to work at the
Sualkuchi silk looms seasonally, an innovation — the Chaneki device —
that can increase productivity comes as a boon
Pronita Brahma, 25, is one of the over 25,000 migrant women, mostly
belonging to the Bodo tribe, who migrate seasonally to Sualkuchi, the
largest silk village in lower Assam's Kamrup district, to work as
contractual weavers. Sualkuchi has a century-old tradition of silk
weaving.
An expert weaver, Pronita first migrated here from Mohoripara village,
around 65 km away, about 10 years ago. A spinster, like most of her
compatriots, Pronita lives in a cramped rented dormitory and supports a
family of five back home.
Villages like Mohoripara in Kamrup as well as others in lower Assam's
Baksa and Barpeta districts, which are mostly inhabited by the Bodos,
reel under abject poverty. Families are either landless or possess a
small holding that can barely provide them with a square meal.
Employment and livelihood opportunities are very limited, which pushes a
sizable number of the villagers to migrate. Those with weaving skills
normally migrate to Sualkuchi only to return after eight to nine months
in order to either work in their own fields or as contract agricultural
labourers.
A Sualkuchi weaver can only expect a paltry income between Rs. 2,500 and
Rs. 4,000 a month by working on a traditional loom; very little of it
is left though after paying for the accommodation rent as well as other
living expenses. Not covered by any organised union, they do not have
any platform to raise their voices against the exploitation experienced.
Most women take loans in advance from their employers and end up working
almost as bonded labourers in order to pay them off. A weaver gets Rs.
700 for a chador and Rs. 300 for a mekhla — the
traditional attire of Assamese women. It takes three to five days to
weave a chador, depending on its design and the motifs used.
Usually the women who migrate to Sualkuchi try to return home after a
few years to start life afresh with their meagre savings. However, with
stagnation of wages and the spiralling prices of essential commodities,
they can hardly save much anymore.
Pronita's employer, Manoj Kalita, while admitting that women weavers
work under very tough conditions, argues that the status of loom owners
is no better. An owner of 16 looms, he believes people like him have
been able to provide some social security to the migrant women though
they might have failed to give them financial security.
Mr. Kalita says: “A sizeable number of them have settled here
permanently, marrying local boys. Once proud of their status as expert
weavers, they now prefer to work in urban areas as sales girls or in
other low-paid sectors.”
Explaining the reason behind the women’s drift towards other
occupations, he points out: “When we used to pay the weavers Rs. 500 for
a piece of chador, the price for a kilo of dal was only Rs. 18. Now even though we pay them Rs. 700, the price of dal has gone up to Rs. 64.”
The problem, according to him, lies in the fact that most consumers of
silk products have a fixed budget. At the same time, the price of silk
yarn has increased because of the lack of policy direction on the part
of the government. Neither does the Assam government subsidise the yarn
nor does it help in its procurement.
Without such interventions, profit margins for loom owners are falling,
which is why they cannot pay the women weavers a better rate.
Although it is one of most prolific centres for silk-weaving, Sualkuchi
has to depend on outside markets for raw material. Its weavers
traditionally weave pat (mulberry) and muga silk. The pat silk-thread comes from Bangalore, and loom-owners are forced to pay whatever price the businessmen there quote. As for golden muga silk-thread — although it is procured locally, it remains expensive since the demand far outstrips supply.
While mulberry silk costs over Rs. 1,800 per kg, muga silk can range anywhere between Rs. 12,000 and Rs. 15,000 per kg.
But what could help to turn around this otherwise adverse situation is a
device, known as the Chaneki, which has been introduced by the Central
Silk Board (CSB) as part of its loom upgradation programme.
The device, which costs around Rs. 5,000, has been designed by Dipak
Bharali, a science graduate who comes from a silk village himself, with
the aim of maximising the weaving skills of the women and increasing the
productivity of looms. The Chaneki helps save on time — almost by half —
in threading the weft thread bobbins for spot design or motif making.
On traditional looms, weavers are required to insert the weft thread
manually to make a particular design. This takes time and often the weft
thread snaps and has to be replaced.
Says Mr. Bharali, who received the President's State Award in 2009 for
this innovation: “Being born into a weavers' family, I was always
thinking of ways to help them. But I knew this would be impossible to
achieve on traditional looms. Chaneki is the result of the
experimentation which took several years.”
The device was further improved under the guidance of Professor A.K. Das
of the design department of IIT, Guwahati, and with financial
assistance from the National Innovation Foundation.
Soon after the decision of CSB to make Chaneki available for loom owners
at a subsidised rate of 80 per cent in March 2012, it has brought about
remarkable changes, not only for weavers, but also for owners. The
device has reached around 400 weavers in Sualkuchi so far.
Pronita is upbeat about the new device and hopes to increase her
earnings – not because of a wage rise but because of a rise in her
productivity.
Perhaps, in time, women like her can go back to their villages, practice
their craft, go in for product diversification and emerge as
entrepreneurs in their own right.
Meanwhile, Mr. Bharali is now looking to design computerised designs and
motifs to make weaving a sustainable and profitable venture. “They are
the key persons who can make or break this entire industry. The survival
of a tradition of weaving that goes back a century depends on them.
This means we need to keep working at developing weaver friendly
upgradation techniques.”
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