Kudos to Geetanjali for a hard hitting, fact based article. Being a Benarasi myself I can relate to problems explained in this article at a personal level.
A big issue that haunts weavers%u2019 community in Benaras is illiteracy, which results into poor weavers getting exploited by traders of Kunjgali (read satti) financially. Subsequent governments in UP too have done nothing about providing education, health facilities, easy loan facilities etc to help weavers%u2019 community, these talented craftsman have been used time and again only as vote bank by one party or another (nothing more, nothing less). Even in current ongoing elections none of the major political parties (or local hopeful candidates) has promised/proposed a single solution that directly helps or provides any respite to the woes of Benarasi saree weavers. In past there have been reports about weavers committing suicide because of poverty, hunger but probably those incidents are still not enough for the power hungry, corrupt, immoral, sub-standard (even going by Indian standards!) clan of UP politicians.
I hope that weavers, tradesman and small businesses involved in currently dying Benarasi saree trade will confront the problem rather then shying away from it. These different stakeholders should perhaps come together and open more co-operatives such as the one in Ramnagar which might help in medium term.
RE:Reflections from a Benarasi
by Ken on Apr 22, 2007 09:10 AM Permalink
Yep, co-operatives sounds the best way forward? but if only such a fragmented group of people think rationally and set aside their diferences to take on the market makers together? Forget about governmental involvement, low hanging fruit is what they can go for anyways...the government is trying to uplift the situation by providing reservation in higher education... Identifying right vocational streams for such affected parties requires too much thought from government side!
All said and done, I hope the powers that be don't force people to compulsorily buy such things so that these people can sustain their lives!
