Life Among the Scorpions Read online

  I asked Ashok Gehlot, the then Union Minister of State for Textiles, to lay the foundation stone for Dilli Haat in May 1992, and I was asked to set up a tiny bazaar on short notice for the event. He not only agreed, but actually came in early. Later, for its inauguration on 28 March 1994, no one had to ‘put in a word’ throughout. Only George Fernandes had to request Madan Lal Khurana, then chief minister of Delhi, to meet me when I had to bring to his notice that Dilli Haat had been ready for four months and was waiting to be inaugurated. Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the leader of the Opposition, so Khurana preferred to defer the honours of inaugurating the marketplace to his senior leader. On inaugural day, George Fernandes, then Janata Dal MP, and I, sat casually in the audience while ministers and officials from the concerned agencies occupied the elevated stage. Craftspersons had been persuaded to occupy the stalls. Vajpayee gave a typically playful speech in which he warned everyone that while ‘crafts’ were good, no one should become ‘crafty’. My first twenty of twenty-four artistic maps documenting the crafts of India was released by G. Venkat Swamy, the then Union Minister of State for Textiles. As a fellow trade unionist, he spotted George Sahib in the audience and called him to join them on stage. After six years of sheer perseverance, I enjoyed my moment of accomplishment quietly from below.

  After the function ended, I received a call from Venkat Swamy’s office. He came on the line to express his dismay about the fact that the BJP and Delhi Tourism officials had been very thoughtless not to acknowledge my role in setting up Dilli Haat, or refer to me at all. I mumbled saying it did not matter, although it was true. Subsequently, he put me on the All India Handicrafts and Handloom Board, which, typically, never met at all during his period in office.

  Interestingly, the entire set of fellow craft aficionados who still decorate Delhi’s drawing rooms and sit on advisory boards to give expert opinions on policies for this sector, watched from a distance without offering to join my efforts in setting up the Haat. Some family members did not visit till the Haat became famous. I think both did not want to be involved in my ‘politics’, as they saw it.

  I also felt that socialist leaders like Sharad Yadav and Nitish Kumar—who claimed to care for the backward classes, tribals, minorities and other underprivileged sections (craftspersons comprise 94 per cent of these communities)—could have taken more ownership of it as a major achievement of a party colleague. It never struck them to acknowledge, even informally, that a woman with no position or power could set up this infrastructure that brought about the economic revival of thousands of craftspersons. However, their personal staff never failed to recommend and quite often at that, some undeserving trader to me who wanted a stall. I wonder why they were stuck in the Mandal mode of quotas. I wish they had considered creative work to be politically worthwhile.

  ~

  In ten years, Dilli Haat became popular, both nationally and internationally. Lonely Planet and other guide books advised travellers to visit it. At one stage, impoverished Russians came in droves to buy inexpensive crafts, taking them back in gunny bags to sell in Moscow. It won awards and became a win-win for Delhi Tourism, the craftspersons and customers. I had devised concepts for regulations to ensure allocations and rents were fair. Regular meetings to monitor, evaluate and improve the complex were held between Delhi Tourism, Development Commissioners of Handicrafts and Handlooms, NDMC, Pradeep Sachdeva, my friend and architect of Dilli Haat, and me, as its founder and representing the Samiti and thus the craftspersons’ voice. This lasted till a seniority issue between the managing director of Delhi Tourism and the handicrafts office ended in such meetings being abandoned. Success bred greed and corruption. Stalls were added and removed indiscriminately and at will by the Delhi Tourism without a heed to proper usage of space or a sense of aesthetics. Traders posing as craftspersons bribed, fought, used influence and manoeuvred through various dishonest means to remain as occupants of their stalls. In this manner, they managed to sabotage the concept of a fortnightly rotation of genuine craft practitioners.

  Today, the banners outside may announce a bazaar highlighting a particular agency or state, but the sellers inside are largely the same faces. Five years of letters, meetings, videos, photographs and protests have not succeeded in creating a system free of corruption. In fact, it seems to be getting worse because of the collusion between traders and officials.

  I had never asked for a position of authority in the management and I soon became a supplicant, begging for permission to hold a crafts bazaar run by my Samiti just once a year for a fortnight. Since the Development Commissioner had disallowed occupancy by NGOs, as many bogus ones had proliferated, we got thrown out with the bathwater.

  Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam had released my book Vishvakarma’s Children: Stories of India’s Craftspeople (2001) just before he became President of India, and had dined on appams* and stew with George Fernandes and me a few times. His query to me and the small delegation of craftsmen, whom I had taken to meet him, was, ‘Why are they troubling you instead of praising you? Please meet the minister for textiles and tell me what he says.’ Shankersinh Vaghela, the then Union Cabinet Minister of Textiles, was sympathetic since he knew my work.

  So, handicraft officials decided the Dastkari Haat Samiti headed by me could be the only NGO to be allotted Dilli Haat since I was its founder, but I had to provide proof that I was indeed its founder. That was like asking Sita to prove she was Lord Rama’s wife! I gave them copies of ninety letters, notifications and minutes of meetings proving I was part of the team but it wasn’t enough. Finally, they found a letter written to me by Manmohan Singh when he was the finance minister, complimenting me for having established Dilli Haat. I did not and still do not have a copy of this letter. Since he was by then the prime minister, it worked. But this is not a happy ending: at least, not yet.

  Dilli Haat has since been taken over by a group of traders who have changed its purpose, systems and integrity. They have a running campaign against my organization and, along with certain officials, have sworn to get us out. A letter was sent to the PMO accusing me of acting like a ‘Jhansi ki Rani’ with craftspersons, selling stalls to bureaucrats and traders for five lakh rupees each and taking exorbitant sums from poor craftspersons. An official sent it to me for a response. I found the complaint had no letterhead or date, and out of the two main signatories, one had died four years earlier and the second denied any knowledge of this. Other names were cut-and-paste jobs from the list of awardees available on the Ministry website. My reply noted that if the officials had done their job of at least verifying the identities of the signatories and the veracity of the letter it would have saved time. The same official who was new to his job sneeringly told me I should be magnanimous and walk away from Dilli Haat even if I was its founder. It was always puzzling to me as to why some bureaucrats who are meant to be public servants and therefore polite, decent and transparent when dealing with the public, should behave in this manner.

  It is also puzzling as to why trying to ensure the continuance of Dilli Haat in a socially and economically just manner should be such an uphill struggle. Mark Twain had once said, ‘It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.’ This has been my view too, but I cannot stop wondering why one gets opposition and trouble instead after one has done some work that is otherwise highly acclaimed in private. As if six years of effort to create this most popular and successful marketplace were not enough, I have now spent as many years in fighting the corruption crawling out of the woodwork from various quarters and combatting accusations of all kinds. As I said earlier, growing success and profits always bring greed and destruction to the best intended policies.

  ~

  I understand that what has kept me positive and energetic even as time and age have advanced is the inspiration and pleasure derived from engaging with policies, ideas and creative projects that keep our craft traditions alive. It also helped its practitioners to be productive and hopeful. Every
time I come across a skilled craftsperson, I am inspired to jump ten steps further into planning how to empower him with a means to a livelihood and also acknowledge their courage to step out of the shadows of anonimity. The fact that I have had such a deep, first-hand involvement in the nitty-gritties of politics, culture, heritage, gender issues and social movements across the country, helps me widen the scope of craft development work and take it far beyond the mere documentation of practices and people or superficial design interventions from ideas borrowed off the Internet.

  At Gurjari itself, the bottom line in our approach to the communities we served was to never send away those people whose work, in their present state, was un-saleable. They needed the most help and if a government development and marketing agency was involved in addressing their lives and needs, it had to lift up the lowest rung rather than build its name on the skills of already well-established craftspersons.

  In early 1990, when Sharad Yadav was appointed minister for textiles in the V.P. Singh government, Lakshmi Chand Jain, who had been Secretary of the All India Handicrafts Board, along with former MP and senior socialist Surendra Mohan, decided to meet him to suggest he appoint me as the new head of this Board. Pupul Jayakar, its long-time head under Indira Gandhi had resigned in protest against the violence in Rajiv Gandhi’s constituency during the elections. They had not spoken to me before they did so or else I would have dissuaded them—not because I would not have wanted to take on such a challenging responsibility, but because I instinctively knew it wouldn’t happen. Sure enough, they telephoned me after returning from their meeting with Sharad Yadav to say that the latter had not taken their proposal on board and that he said he was looking for someone of Pupul Jayakar’s stature. From then till today, ministers with the textile portfolio have been disinterested in this practically defunct and useless body because they have not only never appointed anyone to take the place of stalwarts like Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay or Pupul Jayakar but allowed them to be forgotten as well.

  I never give up my push for the benefit of handicrafts and handlooms. So, later I soldiered on by visiting Sharad Yadav with a long note for him with concrete inputs on how the Board could function usefully considering he had re-constituted it with seventeen people from his own community, some political associates who had no familiarity with the subject, and forty-five ex-officio officials who were transferable. After the meeting, he thanked me, adding: ‘We shall keep talking from time to time’—in Hindi. Nothing happened eventually, as the Board did not meet even once, as far as I know.

  ~

  The last days of the National Front government in 1991 were not uneventful for me. Ajit Singh was Minister of Industry and Commerce. The National Institute of Design (NID) in Ahmedabad came under his care. His office requested my bio data to be sent to him. I did not know why. I woke a few mornings later to read in The Times of India that I had been appointed Chairperson of NID but its top administrators had already met the President of India and requested this appointment be cancelled. Aditi and I were both amused and amazed as we read the news together over our morning tea. The news of my appointment was like a bolt from the blue and I found the desperate measures already afoot to stop it, terribly funny. It was difficult to take both seriously.

  I planned to meet the Director and ask what their problem with me was, but he refused to let me step in to the NID campus to do so. I suggested a meeting at the India International Centre (IIC) lounge. He explained in a rigmarole sort of way that NID had aspirations to go big in industrial design. They preferred to focus on designing cars rather than crafts, he said. He indicated they feared I was already behind the unions that had been protesting outside their gates for months, and that I would upturn the work done by Pupul Jayakar. While not caring for the position, I felt I had to preserve my self-respect so I argued that a national institution meant serving it for the good of the nation and not a small section, and that, with my years of experience in both crafts and its administration, I had the capacity to be even-handed and objective. Moreover, I had no connection with their union troubles at all. I offered to travel to Ahmedabad and discuss things on campus. The Director asked me to desist for a few days. I found it all very odd but did not bother to run to Ajit Singh or do anything about it at the level of government. The media did hound me, and thus I gave some frank interviews about how ridiculous their position was in fearing I was going to be a monkey tearing up their flower garland.

  The V.P. Singh government soon fell, Chandra Shekhar took over, and the people around Rajiv Gandhi prevailed upon the prime minister to undo the appointment in the first order it issued. So, Rajni Kothari, as a member of the Planning Commission, and me, as Chairperson of NID, were the first personalities to have our appointments cancelled by the incoming government. It was a hilarious honour.

  I wondered if it’s a general rule of life that anyone stepping out into public work must eventually prepare for conflict and controversy. Maybe India is more prone to this. Why do roadblocks inevitably come in the way? Or does it happen more to women? I don’t believe in donning a mantle of victimhood and it is an established fact that women are greater targets of attack. Perhaps enthusiasm and energy in public life is considered excessive and unseemly for a woman. Or maybe there are just minefields of egos and vested interests out there waiting to explode if poked.

  ~

  Apart from the creation of Dilli Haat, I was inspired by a hand-painted map I had seen in Thailand called Markets of Bangkok. I thought since India had so much more to offer than just a bunch of assorted markets in a city, a map of the Crafts of India would be a good idea. The project started very modestly in 1993, when typesetting and printing plates were the norm. Creating the map became a huge and intricate exercise that did not end till 2010. It resulted in my overseeing the documentation of all the crafts of each state in India and using local traditional artists’ interpretation of crafts, culture and maps to point to locations of production and sale. Each such activity took six months to complete with a team of graphic designers, researchers and craftspersons involved in every part of the way. We drew from growing technological innovations as we progressed faster over the years. Then it took on a life of its own—the idea came alive slowly in the form of posters, journals, book marks, postcards and later a major exhibition that travelled inside and outside India, and a documentary film called ‘Indian Crafts Journey’ that can be now be seen on YouTube*. Enlarged versions of these maps finally rest on the walls of the Lok Kalyan Marg Metro station in Delhi and the Ashoka University in Sonepat (Haryana), while poster and folded-map versions are still available and bought by people all over the world.

  In February 2004, the maps were mounted in an exhibition at Dilli Haat. The exhibition incorporated innovative modes of display. I had music composed out of the rhythmic sounds of processes involved in making crafts; there was a dance performance and a film show too. The exhibition also used unusual lighting methods to transform the look of the areas involved in the exhibition. All this was quite contemporary at that time. Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was requested to inaugurate this event in the presence of sitar legend Pandit Ravi Shankar and well-known contemporary artist and Padma Shri awardee Anjolie Ela Menon.

  The President had fractured his shoulder. His presence was uncertain. His orthopedic surgeon, who was a friend, assured me that if the President would go anywhere at all, it would be to my event. President Kalam came with a shawl covering his injured shoulder and was enchanted with what he saw, ordering artworks for the Rashtrapati Bhavan from the tribal artists there. Everyone from the cultural world was present and I felt thrilled that I had managed to get the President of India to visit Dilli Haat. We had publicized the invitees widely among the media. Well-known social commentator Suhel Seth had recommended a public relations company for this. We were at the time quite unused to such sophisticated ways of publicizing our efforts. Curiously, only half a dozen obscure travel journals covered the event; there was of course the mandatory photographs o
f the who’s who among the guests that go in the society pages. However, there was no review of the entire map project or the exhibition in the media. Following this, I recall reading Suhel Seth’s comments in a newspaper on the tragic consequences of political bias which seemed to have prevented my magical exhibition in the environs of Dilli Haat from attracting any attention. Interestingly, however, Sheila Dikshit, chief minister of Delhi at that time, was impressed enough to have Delhi Tourism take a part of it to be mounted at Trafalgar Square in London over a weekend. I was astonished at the costs involved in such an endeavour. Later, we were requested to present the entire exhibition at the Frankfurt Book Fair on behalf of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, where India was the guest country. The minister declined to visit this large and popular exhibition.

  It was quite strange for me to observe how with the changing regimes in power—first the NDA and then the UPA government—the perception of my efforts to bring India’s craftsworld to the fore, changed. Often my own government supported me the least. Life and governments are sometimes odd.

  Later, we had to compile all the texts and rewrite them for a major publication titled the Crafts Atlas of India* released in 2012 and selected for a ‘Choice’ award in the USA. Of the many satisfying uses these maps have served, the best was when the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) told me they were used to target and deliver relief to artisan communities during the massive cyclone that hit Orissa (now Odisha) in 1999, and the tragic earthquake in Gujarat in 2001. Originally, the social purpose of these maps was to lead people directly to the sources of production so that middlemen and exploiters would not keep them hidden. They were also to make information on and locations of crafts available to travellers.