Shubha Madhukar

With a little help from Tata Chemicals' community initiative, TCSRD, the rural women of Okhamandal have utilised their ancestral skills to bring colour into their own as well as others' lives

Dressed in maroon ghaghra and choli, and with huge gold sulwas (earrings) adorning their ears, Laxmi Ben (30), Lakhu Ben (27) and Sabhai Ben (30) sit together to work on colourful appliqué patterns at the Okhai centre of Tata Chemicals, Mithapur. These women, belonging to the Rabari tribe, have travelled five km from the Arambda village to work here. As they work, they also sing songs in praise of Lord Krishna. Today they choose to sing a song urging the clouds to pour down over Lord Krishna's abode.

Okhai, which means 'from Okhamandal', is the handicraft brand for which 300 women work to supplement their livelihood. A Tata Chemicals Society Rural Development (TCSRD) initiative, Okhai leveraged the local, traditional handicraft inherent to the women from the Ahir, Rabari and Charan tribes to uplift them from the untold miseries they endured due to their dependence on rain-fed agriculture. The Okhamandal region, located on the tip of the Saurashtra peninsula in Gujarat, is a draught prone area, receiving an average annual rainfall of 20-25 cm. And yet 90 per cent of the population is dependent on it for its livelihood.

Okhai provides these families with an alternative source of income. When Sabhai Ben's husband remained incapacitated for about five years after a fall at a construction site, she joined the TCSRD Self Help Group (SHG) and was trained to make appliqué patterns. It was the money earned from Okhai which saw the household through in those difficult days.

Today, although her husband is back at work, she continues to work at Okhai to earn about Rs 1,000 per month to supplement his income. Now she puts the money into her two sons' education. Tough times have toughened her indeed, but the Okhai connection has instilled in her a confidence, which is apparent in the manner in which she talks about her work or handles the SHG's accounts.

Tall, light-eyed and lean, Laxmi Ben too exudes the same confidence. She speaks fluent Hindi and even travels to other parts of India for Okhai-related work. She has been associated with the project for seven years now. As master trainer she trains all the women who join Okhai. She does most of the design cutting and that too without a stencil. Whether it is a flower, tree or an animal, she just picks up the scissors and cuts them effortlessly. Very creative, she can cut out ten different designs in a day.

She lives in Arambda and takes an auto twice a week to come to the Okhai centre at Mithapur. She earns Rs 1,500 to 2,000 per month, of which she saves some amount every month and rest is spent on the education of her four children and the repayment of the loan she took from her SHG to build a pucca house.

Rhatija Ben (44), the caretaker of the Okhai centre inside the Mithapur plant, is another chip off the same block. Though impaired in one leg, she is agile enough to run around to accomplish the tasks assigned to her. A single parent, she supports and educates her 13-year-old daughter with her earnings. "If my daughter is educated she will not suffer the way I did," she says with a smile on her lips and hope in her eyes.

The Okhai initiative has not just generated livelihood; it has also empowered women in the region. The project began in 2002, with the target of helping 200 women in the first leg. Today there are 300 women under Okhai, and the number is expected to rise to 600 by 2007-08. At present, the project is at break-even point, and once it starts making profits, it will be passed on to the women.

The project began with the formation of SHGs wherein women paid an annual fee of Rs 25 to become a member. The process continues till today. Every woman who joins the SHG goes through a screening process and takes a skill-based patch test. Based on the grades they get in the test, the requisite training is given to them. Each member also receives a card with a code number. This card records the details of all the work done by them, which helps in deciding each woman's share in the profits when they are earned.

The Okhai project is backed by concrete plans. The new focus areas are quality, finish and timelines. Alka Talwar, head — community services, says, "We've identified a group of 50 women who do the stitching, to be trained under NIFT. The training should improve the finishing and cuts."

Plans are in place to buy industrial stitching machines and to set up sheds in villages, which two groups could share. And that's not all. The women are being trained in teamwork, quality issues, marketing basics and costing parameters. TCSRD also conducts workshops for women to have a first hand understanding of how to work as an industry. At the first workshop, a half-day mini market was organised and enterprising women sold not just handicrafts, fruits and vegetables but even the rotlas they had brought for lunch!

These sessions help the women to hone their business acumen, so that they can eventually run the business on their own. Managing and tracking the work is facilitated with an age-old tradition, which they call the Milk Route. Just as the milkman drops bottles of milk and collects the empty bottles from the homes, a van drives into the village, drops new work and collects completed work at the Okhai artisans' doorsteps.

The details of the new and completed work are entered into the books of every woman. Sabhai Ben, who has studied up till class VII, has mastered this skill and maintains these records and accounts for the women in her SHG at Arambda with remarkable efficiency. For each of them, at the end of the month, she accurately calculates the amount in seconds and that too without using a calculator or a pen. She is familiar with banking operations and helps her Okhaite companions with the tracking of bills, signing of vouchers and the savings account operation.

The women in Okhamandal have inherited this art from their foremothers, and thus have an innate proficiency in it. TCSRD merely showed them a way and helped them with colour coordination. Talwar explains, "A lot of their own colour schemes are too loud to appeal to today's metropolitan market. So, we retain their motifs and cuts, and the new colour combinations hike up dramatically the marketability of their products."

The Okhai products are sold through the handicrafts centre at Mithahpur, Sasha — the handicrafts emporium in Kolkata and the Neemrana Shop in New Delhi. Okhai also holds sale-cum exhibitions in corporate offices from time to time to promote the brand. These shows have drawn appreciative customers at Tata Technologies, TCS and Tech Mahindra in the past.

The exclusive apparel, accessories and furnishings from Okhai, in lively and unique designs, catch the fancy of an urban consumer immediately. The project thus has the potential to grow enormously and with support and planning from TCSRD, Okhai is sure to touch and brighten the life of thousands of women from Okhamandal as well as the millions who've never been there.

Uploaded on September 28, 2006