Flea market in sarees doing well in Agra

An average middle-class woman discards at least 4-5 sarees each year in India and this number rises to almost a dozen as we climb up the economic ladder. It is these rejected sarees that have given birth to an innovative, yet profitable industry of "recycling" used sarees in Agra.

Over 5,000 people living in the three villages of Kachchpura, Nagla Devjeet and Moti Mahal located, on the Yamuna river bank just opposite the Taj Mahal, are thriving solely by recycling worn-out sarees and then selling them off to women belonging to the lower economic strata all over Uttar Pradesh, especially the eastern parts for dirt-cheap prices, yet making a handsome profit on these sarees.

Initially started as an in-home affair by a few families of Nagla Devjeet, the trade, which is completely in the unorganised sector, has spread out over all three adjoining villages largely populated by "Syed" and "Abbasi" Muslims. And over the past decade a large number of resident in these villages have moved away from their traditional profession of river-bed farming into this trade, processing close to ten thousand discarded sarees each day to be later sold off to middlemen and individual traders through the numerous "old saree centers" that dot this area.

Wasim Ali, one of the almost two dozen old saree contractors of Nagla Devjeet, said the sarees were usually purchased in bulk from the "agents" spread out in the adjoining districts of Agra, Jhansi, Kanpur and Bareilly, besides Delhi and Haryana. They bartered these sarees from women in exchange for steel utensils and a usual lot of used sarees contained as many as 5,000 specimens, most of them only marginally defaced. The standard of living of the people in the trade had risen considerably.

He said these were purchased from agents for Rs 10-15 per saree and the re-processing of this saree, including the washing, mending, and cutting cost around Rs 5 each, while a "finished" saree could easily sell between Rs 50 and 60.

He said the recycles sarees found a big clientele in the weekly street-markets in eastern parts of Uttar Pradesh, besides Bihar, where these sarees sold out quickly among the economically weak people though he accepted that some unscrupulous traders even passed these sarees as "factory rejects" in the so-called stock-clearance sales, selling them at almost Rs. 100 each and since these sarees showed little or no defect after the recycling process, traders made handsome profits in selling them.

No part of the saree that arrives for recycling is allowed to go waste, he said, even the "falls" are used up for making rugs and cushion covers, bringing additional pocket money to the women who make them. According to Ali, even this prospering business was facing the threat of being shut down due to pollution concerns as during the recycling process, the sarees are washed with strong bleaching chemicals on the riverbank, which was seriously objected upon by the state pollution control authorities and they had been asked to move inland and stop using the riverbanks for washing and drying their sarees, which could ultimately kill the trade as the sun-baked Yamuna banks, being open and airy, served as the ideal spot for drying the sarees quickly after the wash which was not possible inland.