Stuck in time warp, UP's carpet hub refuses to be swept under the rug

An industry, unravelling: Work is demanding, pay just enough

Thinking that a place like Kanakpur exists 50 kilometres (km) from where global supermajors like Walmart, Ikea, Hays, and John Weiss, among others, source carpets to sell the world over could play tricks on the mind.

A short drive from Bhadohi — India’s hand-woven carpet hub — the village of many weavers is still stuck in time. It doesn’t help that the man who represented this area as a legislator since 2007 is Vijay Mishra — a dreaded don or so-called bahubali brahmin presently lodged in prison on extortion and other charges. That a person like Mishra could win an election, even while lodged in jail in 2012 and will do so again in 2022 probably explains the state of Kanakpur and other villages in his Assembly constituency.

Located after a bumpy drive off the state highway, the village is dotted with mud houses, with some in unserviceable states. Basic amenities like toilets, piped water, paved streets that have popped up in many hamlets in adjoining Varanasi district are still an unattainable dream for its residents. But Kanakpur is crucial for the global majors — for many of the factories in Bhadohi flooded with export orders outsource some of their work to small-time weavers in villages like this.

A walk through the village leads to the loom of Rajesh Bind, where he and three others have been at work to finish an order from a contractor in Bhadohi for which they get paid Rs 250-300 per day as labour. Having learnt the art of hand-weaving carpets in 1984, Bind worked in Panipat and Jaipur till 2000 before returning to his village to set up his own loom.  A finished carpet could fetch as much as Rs 1,000 per metre for a ‘tough’ design and much less for the ‘ordinary’ ones.

As weavers, the bargaining power of their labour is low because literally every village in the Bhadohi-Mirzapur belt has been weaving carpets for generations. Contractors in Bhadohi, who are employed by factories to outsource work, have a massive pool of weavers to tap into — with often the person quoting the lowest labour cost getting the deal.

People like Bind were given ‘artisan cards’ by the central government a few years ago to help them scale up by getting Micro Units Development and Refinance Agency loans. “I thought if I could get a Rs 1 lakh loan, I would set up some more looms of my own. Each metal loom costs around Rs 20,000. But the bank turned me away saying no loans can be given on this card. It was a façade,” said Bind.

The growing demand for Bhadohi’s carpets has even led to the mushrooming of a small-scale unit outside Kanakpur with an annual turnover of several lakhs a year. Ganesh Ram, who hails from Mirzapur and works there, said, “I have a small farm which is enough only to grow something for my own family. Although the work is demanding and the pay is just enough, there is not any other remunerative employment around.”

With burgeoning orders primarily driven by the export market, many new weavers have also entered the profession. Jeetender Kumar worked in Goa but came back some years ago after he was paid irregularly by his employers. “I set up a loom last year and regularly get orders from Bhadohi. At least, I get paid every day for my work here.”

The fascination of the West and the Arab world with rugs made in Bhadohi has led to a rise in orders. But underlying that is also a simple and rather fascinating innovation by Ikea — quite like its own non-fussy furniture. Traditional weavers like Bind and others across the region use a panja (claw) loom on which at least two weavers work using pure mechanical manoeuvres. 

The panja has five metallic fingers that are frequently run between two layers of yarn which is suspended vertically on two metallic beams of the loom after a horizontal yarn is inserted to tie a knot on the carpet. Quite like a comb that gets stuck in a weft of hair, the panja tightens the knot (called ‘beating’ in handloom parlance). Then a bow-shaped wooden or metallic frame called the kamaan (bow) is pulled down to wrap the knot between two layers of yarn. This is believed to add durability to the final carpet. In a series of panja and kamaan manoeuvres, the carpet moves towards completion, row by row.

In 2013, Ikea’s engineers, along with that of Eastern Mills, a large carpet-making factory in Bhadohi, made some changes to this loom. The business logic was that the burgeoning demand for Bhadohi’s carpets could be met only by ramping up productivity without electrifying the process, which would take away the exotic ‘handmade’ tag from it and therefore, devalue the product.

A gear-and-chain mechanism was installed, along with an air compressor and a sliding seat for the weaver on the same loom. With the flick of a gear switch located next to his seat, the weaver could beat the knot and further wrap it around more yarn — functions for which weavers had to pause for several minutes while running the panja and then the kamaan for every row of knots in the carpet. At the Eastern Mills factory, rows upon rows of weavers are visible, constantly sliding along the loom after every switch of the gear churning out carpets at break-neck speed and robotic efficiency.

“With this mechanism, we have been able to increase productivity by 40 per cent. I had 350 old panja looms before, each of which was operated by two weavers. Now I have 700 of these modified looms with each worker on their own loom. It’s a great innovation and as demand has picked up steam, this would be a game changer for us. There is absolutely no difference in the exquisiteness of carpets made on this loom and the older ones,” said Abdul Ansari, owner, Eastern Mills.

On this modified panja loom, now one person can weave 0.8 square (sq.) metres (m) of carpet per day. In the older ones, two weavers put together 1 sq. m per day. Although Eastern Mills was first off the block to adopt these modified looms, Ansari mentioned that others too have now installed it. “Change is inevitable. If one factory can supply more to the export market, others wouldn’t want to fall behind,” added Ansari.

The fundamental time and work problem — if four people complete a 12-foot (ft) carpet in 25 days, how many days will it take for one person to complete a 6-ft carpet? — often given to students in school seems to have changed in Bhadohi after Ikea’s intervention.   

As lockdowns in the West have made people look more closely at their homes, handmade carpet exports have boomed. After hovering over the $1.7-billion mark since 2015-16, exports touched $1.9 billion in 2020-21.  In the first two quarters of 2021-22, exports were already at $1.5 billion — up by a third, compared to the same period last year. While India exports to over 70 countries, the lucrative US market accounts for over half of it.

With the increased demand still not being met by the limited adoption of these modified looms which can cost up to Rs 1 lakh to model, many smaller factories receiving orders are outsourcing work to the villages to compete with the bigger ones with enhanced productivity. That explains why several people, devoid of employment opportunities in the cities, are flocking back to their villages in Bhadohi and Mirzapur despite the region’s backwardness to take up this centuries-old profession.

Meanwhile at Kanakpur, Bind said, “The pay is very low for the kind of hand-eye coordination skills and the hard work that goes into making a carpet. If the contractor detects even a minor design flaw, no money is paid for the carpet. Look around and you will see for yourself how we survive.”