Unravelling the Threads of Ultra-Poverty: A Closer Look at Applique Artisans in Village Ghoradia, Orissa

The village Ghoradia in Puri district, Orissa has more than 1500 families. For ages most of these families, which are mostly from the Dalit community have been trapped by ultra-poverty. In July this year I had the opportunity to visit the village. A meeting with the artisans of the village was pre-planned, yet we could not find any spacious room in any of their houses where we could conduct this meeting. It was a cramped room where we finally settled, we wanted to discuss with wider cross-section of the artisans, but for these limitations, we had interaction with just 15 applique women artisans on the mud floor as the last option. I had been eager to understand the socio-economic dynamics, absorb the stories that moulded their lives, I was restless to know their stories from their mouths, not from elsewhere. The women folk of this village work on applique. In fact, applique craft is famous in the entire district with Pipili as its hub. The Pipili is no more a village, gradually growing to a commercial destination, a small town for applique related business. Applique is also known as Chandua. The word applique comes from the French word appliquer, meaning “to put on†. In my career as rural development professional, for more than three decades, I always realised that unless you are being accepted, you are being trusted, and you can’t work with them. Returning to hotel, Crystal Urban Park, Bhubaneswar, late night I wrote a brief Facebook post on July 3, 2023 promising to develop a story soon on them as gesture of my gratitude. I also visited Dhanakera village. Many of the artisans of Dhanakera panchayat are in ultra-poverty, deprived for ages, the villagers depend on agriculture as their main source of income, mostly marginal farmers. To add to their difficulties, most of their agricultural lands are flood affected, the poor farmers say, there is no mechanism to dispose-off the rain water, of this water-logged areas, as a result of recurrent floods, they have been suffering for long. By the country sides there I could see many people of working age are just gossiping or sitting idle. Under the pressing situations applique works are the livelihood for the women folk, it is hardly men’s job. Yet, applique items are slow moving items, hardly fetches any remunerative value. The women whom I interacted said the produces in the applique cluster are damped for dearth of market since 2020, this blocked their working capital; render the women artisans out of job. What is needed is immediate intervention in terms of design inputs, creating e-commerce platform, finding new markets and educating them on UPI mode of business transactions. The present project of Foundation for MSME Clusters aims to address the gamut of these issues. This is a case study on the applique artisans, they all are women. The study aims at Unravelling the Threads of Ultra-Poverty: A Closer Look at Applique Artisans in Village Ghoradia, Orissa