It is rustic, natural, fashionable, and bio-degradable. Plain or splashed with colour, artfully designed or skilfully embroidered, Jute bags are steadily gaining space among the city’s consumers; especially after the Ranchi district administration’s recent directive banning polythene bags.
In the carrier segment alone, jute has got a new lease of life in the form of laundry bags, rucksacks, duffel bags, shopping bags and bottle bags. Besides these, a variety of exquisitely designed clutch purses, tote bags, college bags etc are being stocked by upscale stores like FabIndia, Jharcraft, Handloom House and Khadi. And making the most of this sudden spurt in demand are the small Jute craft production units operating in various parts of the state.
“The jute industry in Jharkhand is still fledgling and mostly confined to small artisan clusters in West Singhbhum, Ranchi, Ramgarh and Bokaro districts. Pakur and Sahibganj are the only jute-growing areas in the state; and their produce goes to mills in West Bengal for processing into raw materials for diversified jute products,” said Manoj Sinha, state project coordination director, Jharkhand Tribal Development Society (JTDS), one of the four cluster development agencies in the state aided by the National Jute Board (NJB).
These agencies typically comprise 10-50 self-help-groups (SHG) of 10-30 artisans each. NJB has assisted them in procuring raw-materials and training workers to make jute products like mats, folders, bags, etc. It also provides sales and marketing assistance through contacts with various agencies and NGOs that help the SHGs under the clusters’ umbrella in selling their products at various fairs, expos and exhibitions. “The recent spurt in requirement of jute bags has prompted some enquiries, and we are currently negotiating with Jharcraft and TRIFED for sales of our jute bags,” said Sinha. Made by some 250 women in its 12 SHGs, so far the bags were sold at 25 percent profit,” but we expect this to go up once our negotiations are done and sales modalities finalised,” he added.
Other clusters too are optimistic. “We have already received enquiries from 10 major retailers including Firayalal, Kashmir Vastralaya, Shoppers’ Mart, Reliance Trends and Mart for supplies of our low-cost jute bags priced at Rs 15 each. And even our regular buyers such as TRIFED, NTPC and government departments are showing increased interest,” said B. Choudhry, secretary of Chotanagpur Craft Development Society (CCDS), a NJB-certified Raw material Bank and Jute Service Centre since 2007.
CCDS currently supplies raw-material and technical assistance to 48 production clusters that employ roughly 550 workers. “Annually, we supply 2 tonnes of raw jute, 5 tonnes textile-grade jute and about 100 tonnes of raw materials for diversified jute products like bags, folders, footwear, furnishings and home decor,” says Chaudhry. Its annual turnover is just Rs 20 lakh, comprising both raw-materials and product sales, the last largely dependent on bulk purchases by corporate and government departments, sales at the various fairs and expos organised by the Development Commissioner (Handicrafts) under Ministry of Textiles, at TRIFED and their own showroom ‘Craft Creations’ in Ranchi’s Sainik market.
“Out of our daily sales of Rs 30,000-35,000 in the past few days since the ban on polythene, Rs 10,000-12,000 have come from sales of jute bags alone. We have also had people requesting us to stock lower-priced bags,” revealed Choudhry. Ambitions too have risen, with JTDS planning to open a sales counter at the Tribal Research Institute Museum to target visitors there, and CCDS working on producing basic jute bags priced at Rs 10 or lower to reach more consumers. Clearly, the eco-friendly ‘golden fibre’ is getting its worth in gold and is giving the nascent sector a firm toe-hold.