Hand in hand

The Dhawan sisters founded an NGO to help makers of local products, produce achieve better margins and reach a wider audience

When Mala Dhawan was growing up as an Indian Air Force kid, she couldn’t help but notice how everything had to be done with one’s own hands. When needed, her father, a fighter pilot who retired as wing commander, did the carpentry work, her mother embroidered and sewed, and everyone around her knitted, cooked, baked or did the gardening. The locals, no matter which part of the country her father was posted in, produced all kinds of marvellous stuff — again, made by hand.

It’s only when she grew up did she realise how little value people placed on handmade