Sunday, August 1, 2010

A mandir that composes songs of change


By Ashirbad Raha
29 Jul 2010


Kala Mandir, a leading non profit in handicraft initiatives has been spearheading a silent journey to revive dying art forms in Eastern India and thereby help poor tribals to improve their economic and social conditions.

Grassmat weavers at Janumdih Village (photo courtesy: Kala Mandir)
"Very often, we would go to sleep just by gulping down a glass of water. Two meals a day was luxury that we could not afford. But now I am a happy man who can think beyond his meals and earn enough to sustain my family," says Dinbandhu, a daily wage earner turned grass mat weaver in Janumdih, a small remote village in Potka Block of East Singhbhum district of Jharkhand.

Having left behind his nights of empty stomachs, Dinbandhu now is a proud owner of a mobile phone. It's certainly quite a distance in the language of transformation.
In the same village, there is another story of empowerment waiting to be told.

Year 2005, and Sarla would dig earth, work as a construction labour and continue to worry about her next meal. Year 2010, she starts her day with hope. She smiles more often and confidence shines in her face. She now rides her bicycle and travels through different villages forming self help groups (SHGs) and training women for alternative income generation through local natural resources.
Quite a long way for a tribal woman who would have otherwise spent her entire life fighting poverty and impoverishment.

Sarla and Dinbandhu are just two names from a growing tribe of individuals from remote pockets of East Singhbhum, Seraikela Kharsawan and West Singhbhum districts in Jharkhand who are finding a road to livelihood and so are the traditional artists in these villages who are reaching a window to appreciation and recognition.

Showing them the path, is Kala Mandir, a leading non profit in handicraft initiatives that has been spearheading a silent journey to revive dying art forms. From taking the artists to different handicraft fairs across the country to providing a market linkage to their products and helping their art forms to take shapes as desired by the market through capacity building and training, Kala Mandir has been instrumental in constantly supporting, nurturing and disseminating various art forms for more than a decade now.

But that is just the tip of an iceberg of change. The story lies in how Kala Mandir has managed to weave its aim of infusing life into vanishing art forms with other components of livelihood in a non-profit business model which has now become synonymous to growth and success. Named as Biponi, (a rural mart owned by a federation of SHGs facilitated by Kala Mandir in Jamshedpur) is the platform for these traditional art and craft handicrafts to reach out to the outer world.

Village women of a SHG formed by Kalamandir (photo courtesy: Kala Mandir)
"When we started working for promotion of rural art and craft, we could immediately realize that for them to survive, it was extremely essential to identify market linkages and find a space in the market for such products. And therefore, when the idea called Biponi was conceptualised, it was very clear that the centre would be an interface for the artists to reach out to the outer world," says Amitava Ghosh, Secretary, Kala Mandir.

The aesthetically designed mart is home to bamboo products, grass mats, paper masks, Dokra art products among many others, all of which come from the training centres being run by Kala Mandir in 29 odd villages spread over three districts of Jharkhand. The uniqueness of the model in which Biponi operates lies in the fact that the artists themselves are present to handle the costumers and therefore get a first hand feedback on the needs and requirement of the emerging market trends. Apart from that there is a payment module by virtue of which the artists gets his due within a week and therefore is prevented from any sort of debt trap. Both the features in a way add to ownership feeling to the artists which is a very important element of any rural venture.

And therefore it's not surprising when talking about the success of Biponi as a non profit business model, Mr Ghosh shares, "From an annual turnover of Rs 1, 61,000 in 2006, we have now reached the figure of close to a crore and the demand for these handicrafts is spiralling up further."
A growth of more than 85% in four years is something that perhaps words can hardly define. It can only be felt in the happiness that echoes in Dinbandhu's voice when he says, "We have so much work with us that we hardly get time to sleep."

read more@http://www.d-sector.org/article-det.asp?id=1326

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