Day 19: A life changing visit to Shantipur’s Handloom Cluster today

Comfort is no test of truth; on the contrary, truth is often far from being comfortable. 

Swami Vivekananda

Mentor on Road had a transformative experience at Shantipur where eight years ago in 2007, I had started working in Shantipur’s handloom cluster within interior West Bengal, the poorest region of Bengal bordering Bangladesh. The poor but artistic weavers were earning Rs. 40 to 50 per day i.e. Rs. 1,500 per month.

We built the first consortia of Self Help Groups (SHG) for 70 handloom weavers of Shantipur by training them on various commercial aspects including cleanliness, better weaving practices, importance of design, marketing, management of yarn bank, accounting system and created their access to finance through banks.

They then started direct marketing. Their first ever lifetime visit outside the village (They had never traveled out of their village) was to Ahmedabad where we arranged their participation in an exhibition. Their saris were so artistic that they not only got sold within two days but that too at high prices. With this confidence boost, they traveled all over India participating in major exhibitions.

We then arranged funding for them to build a two floor common facility center (CFC) where they have looms for training as well as working, a yarn bank, a design center, lab, display showroom, offices etc.

Today there are 400 members in the consortia with their average per day income being Rs. 500 i.e. Rs. 15,000 a month per weaver. One master weaver is currently earning Rs. 80,000 per month. Their lives have changed, now each and every child from this village goes to school and colleges. Today all have Aadhar cards and Jan Dhan accounts. Everyone also has health insurance.

20 out of those initial 70 weavers, whom we had trained, have become master weavers with 100+ weavers under them. Currently they are also selling to traders who are exporting.

Today when I asked them what kind of support they needed at the moment, they requested for three priorities at present.

1. An ambulance was needed for the village as the hospital is far

2. An engineering college was desirable in the village and

3. An eye testing facility was also needed, since these weavers faced eye problems due to weaving.

We have promised them an ambulance and an eye testing camp. We motivated them to put up advertisement hoardings on the Kolkata-Shantipur highway which they have agreed. We will be shortly opening their retail sales center in Ahmedabad and also starting their online sales portal.

Meeting all the weavers today, I was extremely emotional and at the same time happy to see that these same people who were earlier struggling for two square meals a day, are today in a position to aspire to an engineering college in their village and push for exports of their handicrafts.

This is the power of change brought about by energetic volunteers from this village who worked with me in this project such as Amit, Pradeep, Biswajit and Dr. Saumen Mapdar of the Ministry of Textiles who is also the cluster development executive of this project. It was Saumen who executed all the hard field work, day in and day out.

This was the most befitting end to my second leg of this Mentor on Road trip which started from Ahmedabad on 1^st December and closed today on 19^th December.

I, for one, thoroughly believe that no power in the universe can withhold from anyone anything they really deserve. 
Swami Vivekananda