Click to play videoJajpur (Orissa): When Sumalata Das got married four decades ago, all she had to look forward to was raising her children in abject poverty. But thankfully for her, the Golden Grass Craft Movement was launched in her village.
As an active member of the movement, the 60-year-old woman now earns a comfortable living by crafting exquisite handicraft items from dried golden grass.
“I feel so nice to see myself engaged and self-reliant in this job. Even now if my sons tell me to stop this and take rest I protest. I get great satisfaction by making these handicraft items,” says Sumalata.
More than 3,000 women from 11 villages in the Kamagarh panchayat are engaged in the movement. And they owe their economic independence to the 79-year-old Pranakrushna Mohanty, who is the brain behind the Golden Grass movement.
“I realised that the women in these villages were unemployed and they did not have money to do anything on their own. That is when I and a friend of mine, Bhikari Patnaik decided to teach them how to make handicraft items from dried grass,” says Mohanty.
Depending on the size and intricacy, each of the handicraft items takes anywhere between a day to a month to complete, and cost between Rs 10 to Rs 1,000. But these women get only a fraction of that amount. They have no means to directly market their products, and middlemen tend to take a larger share of the profits.
But though the lives of these women may not be as glittering as the grass, it does not stop them from keeping the tradition alive.
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