Pollachi’s women step up with Samarth

How sustainable sari brand Ethicus and Samarth, a government programme, are helping Pollachi’s women learn new skills and reclaim their identity

Hand in hand, the women dance the kummi around a mortar and pestle, next to a large peepal tree. As they sing, two of them smash a coconut, scattering pieces everywhere. The singing and dancing are to celebrate the completion of a 45-day weaving programme at Appachi Eco Logic Cotton, in Pollachi, Tamil Nadu.

Then, inside a well-lit hall, surrounded by the looms where they learnt about warp and weft, the 47 women wait for their viva voce. Examiners from the Weavers’ Service Centre, Salem (which comes under the Ministry of Textiles), and an examiner selected by the Union government, question them about twill weaves and yarn counts. “I could answer most questions,” says J. Benazir Banu, 23, happily. She is the newest graduate of Samarth, a skill development programme for capacity building in the textile sector.

The women cut across caste, community, age and education. The youngest is 21 and the oldest, 57. For some like M. Shahida Banu, the Samarth programme (which started on April 4) has been a chance to learn something new. “None of us had seen a loom before and had no idea about weaving. Now, I go to a shop and demand to know what the yarn count of a cotton sari is,” laughs the 32-year-old, who lives alone with her mother-in-law and child as her husband works in the Gulf. She is proud that she’s proved to everyone she can learn a new skill. For others, it’s been an opportunity to break out of the shackles of daily wage labour or patriarchal oppression at home. “I earned ₹200 a day doing hard labour from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.,” says R. Bhuvaneswari, who signed up because she would not only earn a stipend of ₹13,500 by the end of the programme, but also learn a skill ensuring a steady livelihood.

Helping the women achieve this is Mani Chinnaswamy and his wife Vijayalakshmi Malani Nachiar. Directors of Appachi Cotton, they are also the founders of Ethicus, India’s first farm to fashion brand (they grow their own cotton). In the last 12 years, the sustainable brand has not only created unique handloom saris, but has also given its weavers an identity. (Each Ethicus sari comes with a tag that has the weaver’s photograph, name, age and the time it took her to weave the piece. They were the first in the country to introduce this concept.)

“These women are the first batch, and we hope they will be the catalysts for a social movement that we call Ezhuchi [meaning ‘arise’ in Tamil],” says Nachiar, who has in the past organised cotton trails for names such Donna Karan, the American designer, and Jurgen Lehl of Germany.

The seed of the idea was planted after experiencing years of struggle to keep handloom weaving going. “We heard the looms fall silent one by one as weavers began to desert work,” she says, echoing the reality that is being witnessed across the country — one where the children of weavers are looking for jobs elsewhere, leading to a deterioration of skill in the existing clusters. So, when they saw an opportunity to turn things around with the Central Government’s skill development programme, they grabbed it. “The programme enables the sharing of knowledge that was the preserve of specific communities,” says Chinnaswamy, explaining that weavers from Ethicus instructed the women.

The stories of the women give hope. “Ezhuchi offered us something more lucrative and sustainable, but also something that affords us dignity and an identity,” says N. Nivedita, 23, who, despite having a degree in computer application, had been unable to get a job. Before she signed up, she sold milk while her mother made brooms.