My week at Charaka
Charaka is a Womens co-operative society which is the brain child of Social activist, theatre person Sri Prasanna Heggodu. The store that goes by the name Desi markets the Handloom produce from Charaka which includes a range of apparel and home furnishing products.At Heggodu there are three locations where production happens, first one being Shramajeevi Ashram, second one Charaka and third being Achu Mechu.The pre-production which includes the Dyeing process and the weaving processes happen at the Ashram. The post-loom process which involves tailoring happens at the Charaka campus.Desi uses Natural dyes and strives to walk the path of a sustainable way of production.
During my visit I was exposed to the various sources of natural dyes which would be as follows, Indigo, Eucalyptus which gives a grey-green colour, Manjishtha which gives a light pink colour, Pomegranate which gives a light yellow to yellowish green colour. Kasimkari which givs a black color, Arecanut remains which give an earthy brown colour, Rusted nails and copper for greys.
Charaka hosts a buyer-seller meet annually at the Charaka utsava. The meet is organized as a platform to have a discussion between the weavers and buyers and hence there is an exchange of ideas. It also helps address the issues which arise as a result of the existing communication gap.
At this particular event I was witness to the amazing conversation between the buyers and the weavers. The buyers were concerned that they cannot meet their customer demands because fabric is woven at a slower pace because of the fact that it is a product of only the hand. The weavers and designers who work closely with the community argued that the beam of the loom can only hold upto 50m of fabric and when exceeded there would be problems with the quality of the final product. The designers intervened to make a very strong point that the essence of handmade is the small differences in products. it makes every unit unique in every way. It is true that this aspect cannot justify decline in quality but buyers should keep in mind that this is a huge part of the products they sell and the fact that it is indeed different from a mass produced machine made good. There was another issue which was addressed which was the fact that the profession is not being carried forward by the younger generations because no girl is willing to marry a weaver. While we cannot ignore the fact that we are all in search of a better standard of living there should be innovative methods involved to fix the problem of low wages at this level. At another talk about Handmade the Gram Seva Sangh made a very sensible point which was that the government should standardize the rate of a minimum wage so that one can sustain themselves and some level of financial stability can be achieved.
A question that haunts many of us today is handmade versus machine made .Today so many individuals and groups are starting to travel this path of sustainability . Invariably I find that the products are very highly priced and target the elite. In my opinion when the product reaches the households of the middle class and lower middle class that’s when we can expect perspectives to shift and a higher value for handmade products. Especially in our countries economic status with maximum population that belongs to the middle class and BPL Sectors.
Areas of involvement
I was privileged to receive exposure to the working conditions, organizational structure of such co-operatives. It was a really eye opening couple of days, working alongside design mentors and interns exposed me further to design thinking and attention to the smallest of details. What goes into making a good product . There was also a lot of learning in the way products are displayed and grouped together to be displayed to come up with an appealing and pleasant visual arrangement to catch the eye of the client.