Thanks to the arrival of Raksha Bandhan, the festival of bondage among brothers and sisters, the rakhi artisans of Balichandrapur, Chhatia, Binjharpur, Bari and other areas in the district are now busy with their work.
The artisans have produced huge number of multi-coloured hand bands out of paper, cotton and plastic stones as they have to meet a heavy demand for the product.In the artisans’ houses, not just the male members are busy but the females and tiny children too are chipping in so that job gets easier and quicker. The women and children are found cutting papers, pasting cotton and doing several other works to assist the male members.
Bespectacled, 76-year-old, ebony-skinned Santosh Rana of Chatia is a leader here. Despite his age, he has the ability to turn out more than 100 rakhis a day.“Our scope for work is restricted now. We make rakhis during Raksha Bandhan, kites in Makar Sankrani festival, paper boats in Kartika Purnima and sundry items like paper dolls throughout the year. But they all sell at dismally low prices,” said Manoj Sahoo (32), an artisan of Bari.
“Making rakhi is a seasonal business for which a large number of youths of our families nowadays do not prefer to continue their forefathers’ works. As a result, we are not getting many young hands,” lamented Sandip Rana (64), another artisan of Bari.“Many religious people also bind rakhis on the horns of cattle and for them we prepare special rakhis,” said Ratnakar Rana (63) of Bari.
At best, an artisan family earns only between Rs2,000 and Rs4,000 by making rakhis a month. Two decades back, the artisans used to get coloured papers, cotton, wool and other materials at lower prices. But, the situation has changed and now they are procured at higher prices.Thus rakhis are now costly, said Ranjan Rana, an artisan of Chhatia.