How COVID-19-induced lockdown has pushed Rajasthan’s traditional block printing community to the brink

Everyone has worn kurtas, dupattas or sarees with the iconic floral or geometric hand-prints from Rajasthan. But given the tough times that the crafts community of block printers  is facing in the wake of the COVID pandemic; these could soon become a thing of the past. The mood is sombre in the small town of Bagru, 32 km from Jaipur, known for the handicraft of block printing on textiles. Even though the thousands of metres of fabric printed by the families through the traditional Dabu hand printing method are famous not just in India but across the world; the last year has been bleak for the community of Chhipas, who are skilled in the traditional printing method for several generations.

While there are no official numbers available, the Bagru Haath Thappa Chhapai Dastkar Sanrakshan Avvam Vikas Samiti estimates that there are around 5,000 women and men engaged in hand-printing in Bagru and some towns nearby. According to members of the Chhipa community, the craft is over 300 years old with around 500 families running businesses.

Amit Derawala, 26, is from a family of block printers who run Lal Chand Derawala, a prominent manufacturer of hand-printed dress material in Bagru. “The COVID pandemic has hit us hard because several people from our client base, which includes working women such as professors, media professionals and private sector officials are not going out; they’re not going shopping for clothes and they’re working from home so not wearing our products such as salwars, kurtis and sarees. Overall demand is low,” says Derawala, who is the fifth generation in the family to have learnt traditional block printing hands-on and joined the business soon after he finished college. While he feels that the COVID vaccination has brought some hopes of revival, losses are still mounting; with sales turnover which is usually between Rs 2.5 crore and Rs 3 crore annually down by over 70 percent since 2020. Raw material including colours and fabric is becoming more expensive while old stocks of products have to be sold at big discounts and there are fears that hand-block printing will get replaced by the cheaper mass-produced screen printing.

“Our kaarigaars (skilled printers) and their families have to be fed and we can’t stop work completely despite very few new orders trickling in from the big companies who we supply to. We are, however, seeing an uptick in orders from online sellers; not only the big establishments but also small boutiques especially in South India. We are working with many women entrepreneurs who are selling products online using social media and ecommerce platforms to create new designs. However, without any face to face interaction with customers for many months, language barriers can pose a challenge sometimes,” he says.

Amidst the challenges, help is at hand from organisations such as Fabindia, the largest retail platform for hand-crafted and handloom products, which has been working with artisan clusters such as Bagru since the pandemic started with regard to the rescheduling and spreading out of production to ensure that work engagement continues. “Fabindia realised quite early the potentially devastating  impact of the pandemic on the artisan clusters from which most of the sourcing happens, over production cycles that can run into months.  The company has worked with its field offices to ensure that staggered payments continue to be released over this bleak period to facilitate production and in some cases ensure survival of livelihood over the past months,” Anuradha Kumra, president, apparel, Fabindia, said.

While production estimates have had to be reviewed against the sharp drop in demand and the increased inventory witnessed across the retail sector,  for crafts persons the impact is deepened due to the varied production cycles. At Fabindia, this had underlined the urgency of a renewed focus on ensuring engagement not only with Dabu, but all the other crafts that the company is associated with, Kumra added.

Despite the pressure on ware-housing and increased inventory, India’s largest ethnic products retailer and exporter, has chosen to go ahead with orders already in production, while ensuring continued engagement to contribute to and ensure the basic viability of craft clusters such as Bagru.

The All India Artisans and Craftworkers Welfare Association (AIACA) in a recent survey on the impact of COVID on the crafts sector  - The Unlock Edition - highlighted that some of the key challenges faced by artisans and craft enterprises pertain to cash flow crunches and wage losses. Data from this survey reveals that while there has been a unanimous demand for financial support, it is the individual artisans who are in greater distress due to almost complete absence of working capital. It was also discovered through the survey that individual artisans required more short- term support, while enterprises stressed on the need for support in the long run (beyond six months). Similarly, a big gap was visible in terms of raw material availability to artisans (40 percent) and enterprises (64 percent). It was clear from the survey that the pandemic delivered a more severe blow to the business of smaller, individual artisans, who are struggling to cope with drastic changes in the economic environment.

Roshan Chhipa belongs to a family that has been practising Dabu printing for four generations in Bagru and he reckons that the turnover of hand-printed fabrics from the town was Rs 100 crore annually before the COVID pandemic. “Since March 2020, there has been only 25-30 percent sales turnover compared to other years. Retail sales have been hit badly in the city of Jaipur which was a bustling hub for foreign and domestic tourists before the pandemic. We see some hope with the vaccine shots being available to people in India, but there’s still a long way to go before recovery to earlier levels. We are now focused on online sales through Amazon and other channels,” says Chippa, whose family company RK Derawala is a large supplier to Fabindia and other retail chains and online businesses around the country.

Not just the large online retailers, small e-commerce players such as Rush Me Boutique Fashions based in Pune, too, have been supporting hand-printers from Bagru during the pandemic. “We set up the e-commerce venture to design and sell ready-mades for men and women with the goal to promote Indian handloom and handcrafted fabrics in 2013. But last year, post-COVID there was a sudden spurt in online sales; which doubled after May 2020,” says Rashmi Patwardhan, a former IT professional who decided to turn entrepreneur and set up the venture. She sources block printed fabrics in bulk from Bagru and has even designed 10 unique hand blocks for a signature collection. But some of the challenges that she has faced over the last several months are dwindling supplies because many of the vendors in Bagru are facing financial distress and she is not being able to travel there herself for procurement.

Chennai-based Vidyalakshmi Ambikapathy who runs Matkatus.com, an e-commerce site to curate, design and sell artisanal and handcrafted textiles from natural fibres to a niche client base in India and overseas, too is seeing an increase in sales of products from Bagru and other crafts hubs. “The pandemic improved traction for our online store. Firstly, because our customers were all stuck at home and all sourcing had to be done online and second because Bagru prints are usually on fine cotton fabrics and ideal for comfortable lounge wear which is what most professionals prefer in a work from home situation, especially in southern India,” she says.

The networks of resellers, usually women selling directly to their small groups of customers from their homes and using Whatsapp and social media platforms as their marketing tools, too, are now being tapped by several of the Bagru hand-printing companies. “Since New Year 2021, production has been picking up here. And even though it’s not business as usual at retail outlets either locally in Jaipur or across India; we are directly addressing the resellers networks by joining Whatsapp groups and sharing photos of our products and getting in touch personally with the customers. There are over 2,000 resellers, most of them women who sell within their small networks; in fact, even during the days of lockdown and restricted movement, they were able to reach their customers who are often neighbours and people living in the same colonies or housing societies,” says Rakesh Chippa, who has set up a closed group of his customers for his company Bagru Cotton Crafts, so that he can remain in touch directly with his loyal customer base.

E-commerce platforms are increasingly becoming more sensitive to crafts people and their livelihood issues. An example is Fabcurate, a Surat-based online sales platform  set up by a group of designers in 2020, which sources different kinds of traditional fabrics from across India including Dabu prints from Bagru.

“The pandemic halted the production of Dabu prints and the community has been burdened with huge unsold inventories without access to sales channels. Cash flow, food and healthcare have become problems for them,” says Sanjay Desai, director, Fabcurate. The sourcing team of Fabcurate designers visited Bagru after the lockdown was lifted last year and has placed substantial orders for Dabu hand-printed fabrics. “We are paying the right amount for their craft and helping boost the morale of several artisans in the area and their families,” Desai adds.

While demand is slowly picking up, it’s still a long way to the pre-COVID situation. In fact, Vikas Chippa, who along with members of his extended family runs a block-printing unit in Bagru - Ashoke Printers, fears that if demand doesn’t pick up substantially over the next few months, the traditional craft of Dabu printing, which is the pride of Rajasthan, will die out. While in 2020 orders worth over Rs 50 lakh have been cancelled and the inventory pileup is starting to choke financially, things are looking up a little since the New Year, he says. “However, sales are still around 30 percent less than the months before COVID and we are struggling to support our workers even though payments from our large customers are mostly on hold,” Chippa adds.

For this crafts-dependent community, practically overnight, the entire cycle of demand and supply came to a standstill, with revenues registering a ‘zero’.  Through the labour-intensive Dabu method, each enterprise creates many jobs associated with the activity of block printing. Going forward, the only hope for the people of Bagru is incentivised and increased demand. “This is a very trying and difficult time for craft-based livelihoods. A rapid revival of demand would certainly provide the big impetus to the craft sector, including that of the block printers of Bagru,” says Fabindia’s Kumra.