Machine tools increase Gadia Lohar women’s suffering
“Earlier everything was made by hand. Now, there are machine-made goods which are way cheaper. We don’t have money to buy the production machines—their cost often runs in lakhs. We make different sizes of, say, an axe depending on what you want to cut with it. The price could be Rs 1,300, Rs 600 or Rs 300 per piece. Three-four of us get together to make one axe in a day. A machine-made one would make a number of them in a day and each would cost Rs 150 instead of Rs 300. Why would anyone then buy what we make?” says Dali Gadia Lohar, a 60-year-old woman.
She is from a settlement off the Ajmer-Jaipur highway in Padasoli village. It is a settlement of Gadia Lohars, who live in extreme poverty.
Now, besides what they make themselves, one can see the Lohar women sitting on the roadside selling metallic utility items like locks, chains, kitchen knives, bells, spoons of different kinds, woks, rat traps and the like. They purchase these and sell them for a miniscule profit. “If we buy goods worth Rs 20,000, our total earning will be Rs 2,000. That’s it! We are able to make Rs 2,000-3,000 per month. This involves running this roadside stall from morning till evening. See, I have been sitting here since morning and still have earned just
Rs 50 today. It is past afternoon. We can’t even buy the vegetables we need to eat with this amount,” says Kamla Gadia Lohar, who sits by a noisy crossroad off the Ajmer-Jaipur highway at Dudu village.
Other women of her community also sell their fare at this crossroad. Santosh Gadia Lohar has the same story. “We earn Rs 5-10 per item. We make axes and a few other items, but everything else we purchase to sell. Our family work of beating iron into goods has taken a hit,” she says.
Mooli Devi, an elderly woman among them, says, “We don’t have any land. What else would we do? We buy this stuff from Jaipur and Ajmer and sell it here on the roadside. We have been residents of the Gadia Lohar Colony at Malpura Road nearby for over 50 years now.”
The fairs that are the prime space for handiwork promotions are also not easy for the Lohars. “Pushkar Fair, the biggest fair of the area, is no longer profitable time for us. The organisers charge us Rs 3,000 per foot to sit and sell our fare. And, even after paying that amount, they keep shifting us from one place to the other. Whether or not we sell anything, we have to pay this rent,” Dali says.
“Our lives have gone like this only sitting on the roadside, but we do hope for a better future for our children,” Dali says. Meanwhile, her granddaughter, Bhawana, a student of Class 2, returns home from school. Ask her what she’d want to be and she proudly answers, “A soldier.”
Bhawana and her cousins have their own dreams. “We have heard about online work. Maybe, if our children are able to complete their studies, they can look at online options for showcasing our work. But, who would buy them?”
Dali’s question remains even as she proudly looks at Bhawana, who is now running around the settlement in her ‘uniform’.
Would Dali’s grit and Kitab’s motivation shape the direction of their grandchildren’s lives into newer equipment of hope, like the iron they shape ceaselessly? Many questions remain unanswered as these hardworking women stare at another day where the work of their hands may or may not sell. (concluded)
(The author is an independent journalist and educator from Ajmer, Rajasthan: Charkha Features)