OODENA, INDIAN-ADMINISTERED KASHMIR – During the chilly winter season, Tahira Bano, 25, works on a carpet loom along with her younger sister, Batool Akther, 22, and father, Ghulam Ahmad Bhat, in a modest room in Oodena, a village in northwestern Jammu and Kashmir state. The trio of carpet weavers sits on a long, wooden seat laid over a few empty sacks as they work on a 6-by-9 carpet.
“We’ve been working on this carpet for last one month,” Bano says in Kashmiri. “It will take few months more to complete it.”
Bano’s face is pale, and her eyes look sunken and depressed.
“We want to escape carpet weaving, but how is a question,” Bano says.
Bano has been engaged in carpet weaving since her childhood. She says she never went to school because her parents couldn’t afford it. Instead, she had to start weaving in order help her family earn money.
“I have been doing it over past 14 years now,” she says. “I yearned to go to school, but due to poverty and financial constraints at home, couldn’t fulfill my dream. There were no financial resources for us to study.”
Her parents say they regret not being able to afford to send their daughters to school.
“It is too late now,” says Raja Begum, Bano’s mother.
Bano looks anxious as she takes a rare break from her work.
“This is our source of income,” she says. “We’ve no other option.”
As her father reads out the “talim,” the instructional script for how to weave a carpet, Bano and her sister are quick to respond. They cut threads with a “khoor” –a sharp blade – frame knotsand weave the carpet. In between, Bhat puffs hookah to relax.
Usually, their day starts early in the morning and stretches into the late evening.
“We start work at 7 in morning, leave in between for brief intervals for lunch and tea and wrap up by evening,” Bano says. “We’ve a weekly off on Fridays and festivals.”
Bano says they would like to quit this job but that alternatives are daunting. She says that changing professions would require them to learn an entire new skill set and industry, which would be hectic and time-consuming.
“We’ve no option,” she says. “We wish to go out but have to complete work.”
Her father, too, has been engaged with carpet weaving since his childhood. He says that he used to go to his master’s workshop to weave carpets for more than 15 years.
“My master was tough,” he says. “He often used to beat me, and a thought of committing suicide often captured my mind. One day, I even jumped into [a] river to end my life but was saved.”
He says that he had to work in order to support himself and his four siblings.
“We were poor and had nothing to eat or wear,” he says. “I used to earn 25 paise [half a cent] per day.”
Begum says her husband eventually got his own loom.
“It was after marriage that we set up a loom at our home,” she says. “Prior to this, he worked at his master’s place.”
Bhat says he has taught the art of carpet weaving to many people in the area.
“I have trained people both about script and weaving pattern from adjoining areas, including Pattan, Sheerpora and Buren,” he says.
Bano and her two sisters learned carpet weaving from their father, although their mother never learned. The eldest sister quit weaving after she got married three years ago.
Bano’s eldest sister knew how to read the script, but Bano says she refuses to learn. Otherwise, she says she will have no spare time.
“Usually, when father gets busy with some other work, we get a holiday as there is no one to read out talim,” Bano says. “If I learn it, then I have to stay back.”
Bhat says he, too, is fed up with carpet weaving but has no other option after investing so many years in the industry.
“A human heart wishes to be far away from the clutches of carpet weaving,” he says.
Many say carpet weaving is declining in Kashmir because of low wages and health problems, leading weavers to look for more profitable professions. Weavers attribute various health problems to the long hours spent working on the carpets. Some people, especially women, say they still find the industry profitable, although they vary on whether to pass the tradition on to their children. The government and nongovernmental organizations have been setting up cooperative groups and other schemes to boost the industry.
Munshi Muzaffar, director of handicrafts at the Directorate of Handicrafts, a government department, says that the government is in the process of conducting a fresh survey of the number of carpet weavers in the Kashmir Valley.
“We are undertaking it and possibly will start in June,” he says.
There were nearly 100,000 carpet weavers in the area, according to the last survey.
“A baseline survey has been conducted in 2003, according to which there are 374,000 artisans, out of which 94,000 are carpet weavers,” he says.
There are 7.1 million people in the Kashmir Valley and 12.5 million people in the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir, according to the 2011 census.
Bano’s uncle, Ghulam Qadir, who is the head of the village, says carpet weaving is declining in the region.
“In past, carpet weavers were respected, and weaving was considered as profitable art,” he says. “But now, it is on decline. This will end during our lifetime only.”
Qadir attributes the decline partially to low wages. He says that a weaver earns 90 rupees ($1.70) a day. He says that selling carpets through wostas, or middlemen, decreases the wages weavers earn.
“In most cases, wosta provides material to weavers and accordingly pays them less wages, in comparison to a case where weaver weaves his own carpet and then sells it,” Qadir says. “In a latter case, he gets 700 to 800 rupees [$13 to $15] per foot, whereas in former case he is paid 400 to 500 rupees [$7.50 to $9.50] per foot.”
Ali Mohammad, a local businessman in carpet sales, says the various parties involved in the transaction blame one another.
“Generally, a carpet weaver would say that he reaps no benefits and is exploited by wosta, who in turn would blame businessmen and exporters,” he says. “Exporters and businessmen would put forth their own reasons.”
He says that usually carpet weavers take huge advances from the wosta, which are larger than the weaving charges.
“Consequently, they get indebted and are willing to work on lesser wages,” he says.
Qadir, who occasionally weaves a carpet himself, says that the carpet that Bano, Bhat and Akther are weaving is for a wosta. He says the family received an advance from the middleman for their daughter’s wedding.
“The carpet they are weaving belongs to wosta, and they’ll be paid [wages] of weaving,” he says.
Qadir says that most villagers do carpet weaving during Kashmir’s harsh winters because it can be done inside. But in the summer, they switch to more profitable options, such as working as porters, digging wells and canals, harvesting crops and doing construction.
“During summers, 80 percent of population here does labor work that they find profitable,” he says. “A laborer earns around 250 to 300 rupees [$4.70 to $5.70] a day. That is comparatively better than earnings they get from carpet weaving.”
Mohammad Maqbool Wani, a carpet weaver from a village in Pattan, another town in the district, says he prefers labor work to carpet weaving because it is more profitable. But he says it’s not available year-round.
“We aren’t able to find labor work throughout year,” he says. “Generally, we do labor work during summers and carpet weaving during winters. For labor work, we generally have to move to cities or towns.”
Mohammad says that the shifting of carpet weavers to other alternatives is a major setback to the sector. He says that there has also been a decline in young children ages 6 to 10 working in the industry, thanks to a rise in education.
“The same has declined to a large extent, as most parents prefer sending their children to schools,” he says.
In addition to low wages, many carpet weavers cite various health problems for wanting to abandon the industry. They say backaches, weak eyesight, and knee and spinal disc problems plague them.
They attribute these health issues to the long hours they spend sitting and concentrating on weaving. They say they must sit for hours on either a long, wooden seat raised slightly off the ground, a “waagu,” which is a traditional mat, or a “booher,” which is a sack.
“Carpet weaving often leads to health problems like weak eyesight and backache,” Wani says.
Qadir says that weavers sit for eight to nine hours a day, even in temperatures below freezing during the winter. He says many people must wear spectacles after concentrating for such long periods.
“Forty percent of population uses specs due to weak eyesight, as carpet weaving affects eyesight the most,” Qadir says. “Besides, weavers don’t get much time to move around.”
But certain families say that carpet weaving is still a viable and profitable industry. They say that innovative and traditional designs of carpets are still in demand locally, nationally and internationally. Women especially are engaged in weaving because it is a home-based industry.
Naza Bano, a common name here, is a middle-aged woman who lives in Ganasthan, a village located a few kilometers from Oodena. She insists weaving is still profitable.
“Carpet weaving is time-consuming, but profitable,” says Bano, who has been involved in weaving since her childhood.
Arshida Bano, another woman of similar age from the area, agrees.
“More returns are earned by weaving a carpet,” she says. “Almost every woman in the area weaves carpet.”
She says she usually sells her carpets through a wosta.
“Usually, wosta pays money in advance, irrespective of our requirement,” she says. “Often, deadlines are also provided.”
Both the state government and nongovernmental organizations sponsor self-help groups, groups of 10 to 12 women who contribute money and work together on a joint activity, such as carpet weaving, tailoring, cultivating vegetables, and then share the profits. Many self-help groups here functioning under Indo-Global Social Service Society, a national nongovernmental organization, have opted for carpet weaving.
Zareefa Bano, a woman with advanced weaving skills from Pattan, says she joined one of the society’s groups, Aman Self-Help Group, with the hope of generating more income for her family. She says that her earnings from weaving carpets paid for the raw materials needed to construct her family’s house.
“Just as small pebble supports boulder, in a similar fashion [my] monetary contributions help us in managing household affairs,” she says.
Engaged in weaving since her childhood, she says that her parents used to send her to a nearby village to work because they didn’t have a loom at home. She says she detested this.
“I wished we had a loom at home so that I could weave at ease,” she says. “My parents used to give me 10 rupees [20 cents] that motivated me to work.”
Today, she is able to have her own loom by sharing one with another group member, Kulsooma Begum. Bano says she wishes to eventually become a middleman to sell and purchase carpets.
But Bano says she doesn’t want her five children to learn carpet weaving. Rather, she wants them to learn other more profitable skills, such as tailoring and ari work, a type of handicraft, so that they can be financially self-sufficient.
Arshida Bano says many young people feel similarly about carpet weaving.
“Younger generation isn’t much interested,” she says.
Most self-help group members say that their parents and grandparents weren’t engaged with carpet weaving as a traditional family practice. Rather, their parents pushed them into it because of poverty at home. Now, more children are receiving educations.
But Kulsooma Begum says that in certain cases, children aren’t interested in education because they think they can earn more money by working on looms. Her children learned carpet weaving to help sustain the family after their father died 17 years ago. Begum says that she too learned carpet weaving at a young age.
Muzaffar says that the government has created welfare schemes for the development of artisans in the past, and it is currently developing one specifically for carpet weavers.
“For revival of carpet weaving, we’ve mega carpet project wherein we’ll have modern looms and working conditions would be improved,” he says. “Besides, we’ll be having Common Facility Centers for overall benefit of weavers so that they get better wages. Microcredit scheme is also available for weavers.”
Muzaffar says that the government has already launched this project. He says that microcredit facilities are already available in villages where carpet weaving is prevalent, and the free distribution of looms will start in March.
“We’ve four projects wherein focus would be on carpet concentration areas in valley,” he says. “Clusters of 50 weavers would be formed, who will be provided all facilities. Raw material would be made available to them, and then they would be facilitated in marketing as well.”
