Silk Factory

embroidery and sequence design

Varanasi is known world wide for its hand made silks, it is the towns biggest industry. I am lucky in that Kush, one friend of Rajesh, works in this industry and invited me to tour a small portion of the silk making are of town. There are no big factories, the whole industry is ran out of peoples homes or small rooms. Conditions for the workers are of course grim. Very low lighting, no heating and very little sunlight. The wages ranged from 200 ($4)  to 600 rupees ($12) per week depending on the age of the worker, their experiences and skill in embroidery. The workers I met were mostly boys and men but I did get to peep in a room where 4 women worked, however they were too shy to talk to a foreigner. I was told that because it is mostly Muslim women that do this work they are in their homes and have little contact, or need to go outside. A lot of silk is made by machine these days. The machines weave the silk more smoothly  and more readily available but it is also costing people their jobs. Unemployment in the silk making business is increasing, a machine can do in a few hours what 15 people would do in one month. Luckily wealthy Indian still prefer handmade silk so there are still a lot of silks made on looms. Loom work looked to be a painfully slow process and it was just amazing to see how intricate designs are woven into a fabrics. It gave me a new appreciation for the amount of time and effort that goes into some of the really fancy saris. On leaving I did however feel quite disguised at how hard people work for such little money and had no great desire to buy any of the beautiful and colourful scarfs that Kushis' boss was trying to get me to buy.

silk scarfs

New weaving machines

boys doing embroidery