Improved TARA loom
The Mayan experience

Santosh is much more confident, independent and aware that she was a few years ago before Development Alternatives started its Handloom Weaving Centre in Mayan village of Rewari district, Haryana. Today she is a proud contributor to the family income, she sends her children to school and can afford more nutritious food for her family. she has learnt that women form other caste groups are no different form her, and has established and efficient working relationship with them. Thus go the profiles of other women who are also active members of the Centre.

Development Alternatives with its improved high productivity handloom package, the TARAloom, started a women’s handloom production centre in July 1987 supported by funds received from the Swedish International Development Authority.

The first phase of the project involved village and site selection, appointment of supervisory, staff, selection and motivation of weavers and installation of machinery and other infrastructure. Then came the phase of training the weavers, training staff for finance and administration, establishing working conditions and preliminary market surveys. The final phase was that of setting up production and marketing systems in which market segments were identified and marketing outlets established.

With the completion of two years of the project, the centre which started with six looms has grown into a twelve-loom unit with thirty women engaged in weaving and allied activities. The centre has the capacity to produce up to 3000 metres of cotton fabric per month. the women have become adept weavers and earn a regular monthly income averaging about Rs. 700.

Today, this project has reached a critical point, as the unit is without any kind of external funding. It has to achieve commerical viability and become self-financing, something it is steadily working towards.

In April, the centre was taken over by TARA (Technology and Action for Rural Advancement). TARA is a sister concern of Development Alternatives and is responsible for disseminating the technologies developed by Development Alternative as well as marketing end-products like fabrics and handmade paper.

The viability and sustainability of such micro-enterprises depend greatly on marketing. Funds generated through sale of goods produced get further recycled into the various production processes. Finance is not the lone issue involved; there are other important issues like quality control, production planning and management which play a very important role.

The Mayan experience has shown that it is quality that is generally in demand. trained, experienced and committed personnel, local community participation in decision making, careful planning and continuous, aggressive marketing strategy are thus essential ingredients in the functioning of Centres like the one at Mayan. Predictably, appropriate production and marketing strategies took some time to be developed and now Mayan Handloom Centre is at the take-off stage. The centre is now producing against orders from well-known retail outlets like OXFAM; It also caters to the local village needs. The Centre is currently producing cotton fabric for linen, dress material and ‘khes’, a traditional thick cotton blanket. It plans shortly to diversify the product range to blankets and durries. Orders are flowing in and the future of the Centre and the women associated with it seems promising.

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