From the archive
26 Aug 2026
On an afternoon in Indira Nagar, a neighbourhood in Barmer, in Rajasthan's border country with Pakistan, a group of women settle into a small room with needles and bright thread. They move between each other's houses through the week, stitching Sindhi embroidery - cushion covers, curtains, handkerchiefs - in the hours left over after cooking, washing, livestock and children. The craft came with them across the border, passed from grandmother to mother to daughter, and for many households it is now the difference between eating and not.
Neeta Devi Meghwal's family crossed from Jhande Ka Tala village in Sindh during the 1971 war, among tens of thousands of mostly Hindu migrants pushed into Barmer. In the early years in Mithrau village, even drinking water was hard to find among the dunes; her father took daily-wage labour when there was any, and her mother's embroidery was the one skill they had that could be sold. It still is.
Barmer's artisans now feed a state handicraft export trade worth ₹750 crore in five months of 2023-24, yet most of the women earn around ₹150 a day, little more than half Rajasthan's legal minimum of ₹285 for work classed as unskilled. Between the woman and the buyer stands a chain of middlemen who set the piece rates and keep the rest - a cushion cover that leaves the district can retail for ₹800 to ₹900.
The repair, being attempted slowly, is ownership. SURE, a Barmer organisation that has trained artisans since the early 1990s, helped the women incorporate the Thar Artisans Producer Company in 2020. All 700 members put in the same ₹500, buying 50 shares at ₹10 each, so every shareholder's stake is identical. They elect ten directors from among themselves and vote on the business; SURE provides management support but holds no power over decisions.
It has not yet paid out. The company's first two years coincided with the pandemic, so no dividends have been distributed, and the women are still paid per order as before. What has changed is where the profits, when they come, will go - and whose hands set the price of the work.
A producer company puts the margin back with the makers: equal shares bought at a price every member can afford (₹500 here), a board elected from the membership, and an experienced organisation providing management support without taking a vote. The equal-stake rule is the load-bearing part - it stops early organisers from quietly becoming the new middlemen.
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