Shabnam: Creating Livelihoods with Needle and Thread

Shabnam Ramaswamy has revived kantha (running-stitch quilts) and provides sustained work to a large number of women in the surrounding villages near Katna in the Murshidabad district. In the course of our conversation she mentioned that the idea of offering kantha work to the women in Katna, her native village, came to her when she was visiting her childhood friend to pay her condolences on her mother’s demise. Her friend was holding on to a kantha, made from her mother’s old saris, weeping and saying, ‘Ma ki khushboo (my mother’s aroma)’. Shabnam realised that every women in the village knew how to make a kantha, and if she could give this a contemporary twist by getting them to produce textiles suitable for urban markets, she could create work for women in the surrounding areas.

Traditionally, women would recycle old sarees and dhotis by layering them together to make quilts for the winter months. They have multi-purpose uses as shawls, quilts, coverings and floor rugs over the chatai (grass mat) in the winter months. Apart from the running stiches to bind the layers, the women would create elaborate pictorial representations of their lives and surroundings, or geometric patterns. The phaansh kantha work of the Muslim women of the Murshidabad region is done by counting the threads of the woven fabric, and creating geometric patterns along with the running stitches that bind the fabric, unlike the nakshi (pictorial) kanthas embroidered by the Hindu women.

Shabnam mentioned, ‘We chose a path that is simply built on a skill that women in the area already possessed, namely kantha,’ Over time, what began as a livelihood project for poor village women has developed into the strong label, Katna’s Kantha. It represents the collective effort of over 1800 women from 125 villages in Murshidabad. They create embroidered saris, stoles, dupattas, bedcovers, throws and wall hangings that they sell through exhibitions in urban cities.

After spending the morning talking with Shabnam, I decided to walk around one of the villages to interact with the women creating the embroideries. I realised that they do not earn a lot, around Rs.60 to 80 a day but this is regular, sustained work, and the women were not complaining. When a woman saw the shocked expression on my face on mentioning her earnings, she said, ‘For us this money is precious. I was able to buy my husband a motorised rickshaw (previously, he had used a peddle rickshaw), something he could never have been able to afford.’ Regular earnings have given the women a feeling of self-worth and dignity. ‘We are now respected and the money we earn has helped us pay for the education of our children and has improved the condition of our lives,’ mentioned another woman.

Some of the women travel to exhibitions, which gives them an exposure to the outside world, an opportunity to interact with customers. One woman explained, ‘if we take home more money, the saree that we embroider will not sell. At exhibitions we have understood, beyond a price point, our sarees would only cater to a small niche market. We are around 1800 women in our organisation, so we produce a lot and need to sell a lot. The organisation has been able to give us regular work for the last many years. This has changed our lives for the better’.

Today, Shabnam runs two schools with better infrastructure than most schools in cities. The fees are low, keeping in mind what the families in the area can afford. To avoid interference from government officials, the schools do not accept any government grants, so she needed supplementary funds to support them. Shabnam has created a dynamic, sustainable model, where the earnings from her kantha projects help her cope with the financial shortfalls of the schools. In many ways, it is the work of the women of the surrounding villages that supports the education of the children of their villages. Shabnam’s organisation has grown, encompassing various areas of education and women’s empowerment. The approach is not one of welfare or charity but focuses rather on building local resources to take the work forward.

Shabnam is a remarkable woman who has made a huge difference in the lives of many in this region. Her motto is: The best way to overcome a challenge is to simply do the job.