While Indian handlooms are being celebrated the world over, back home in the rural villages of India, weaver suicides continue due to abject poverty and lack of avenues to better their living conditions.
Despite Indian handloom being at the centre-stage of world fashion, the people responsible for weaving these gorgeous fabrics see no monetary benefit coming their way. “Something is clearly a miss”, said Praveen Chauhan, Founder at Association for Reforming Traditions. ART is a startup and an appreciable initiative which promotes the traditional artisan skills and empowers women living in marginalised communities.
Mr. Praveen Chauhan is a Nomadic Designer and working closely with Ministry of Textiles, Govt. of India. In an interaction with Business World team at its Delhi based office, he expressed his views on the poor conditions for artisans and explained about the mission, vision, objectives and strategies of ART.
According to Mr. Chauhan providing full employment, fair wages and identity to weavers as well as empowering women, providing technical skills and making India socio-environmentally conscious are the Visions ART wishes to accomplish in future. These objectives can only be fulfilled by creating awareness and promoting the traditional weaves in a contemporary context and most importantly connecting the weavers to both the domestic and international markets.
Talking about the objective of his organisation he revealed recent reports about the handloom industry. According to a survey, over the past 10 years the number of handloom weavers have reduced by up to 50% in some regions, with the next generation opting for the power loom or moving to the cities in search of alternative employment. Skilled weavers are also migrating to the cities and engaging in unskilled labour, often leaving their village and families for extended periods just to make a living.
Although there will be a natural attrition, this dramatic loss of skilled weavers will mean that many specific regional techniques will soon become extinct. Not only will this be a significant loss to India’s heritage, it also means that there will be many skilled artisans who would otherwise be gainfully employed, engaging in menial and unskilled work.
ART works on simple strategies. Recently Praveen established a partnership with Caroline Poiner, founder of Artisans of Fashion — An Australian based Social Enterprise linking designers and brands to artisan communities in India. Through this partnership they look to preserve some of the traditional skills and provide development and employment opportunities for the artisans by providing the link to western brands, designers and students in the field of fashion & textiles. This will be launched & marketed in Australia and the US initially under the brand Loom Project.
ART’s work has covered Kashmir, Meghalaya. Jharkhand, UP and now it has put its footsteps in Bihar. In a small city in Bihar named Bodhgaya, Loom Project will manifest as a centralized set up which includes a weaving unit, a dyeing unit, a stitching unit, a finishing unit and studio apartments for local & international designers as well as students. For this purpose they will be seeking funding to support the establishment of the unit, they see the long term benefit to the weavers as truly appreciable as this provides the environment for sampling and design innovation that can then be communicated directly with the weavers.
Mr. Chauhan said, “At ART, profit is not at the core of what we do. Sustainability is critical to our success however central to our work is the betterment of artisans. The industry needs to realise that artisans are artists not labourers, it is their incredible skills that bring uniqueness to a fabric and these skills should be valued.”
ART doesn’t believe in using intermediaries, they directly connect weaver to customer by writing the name of the weaver on the product made which reveals his/her identity.
