SAF's DEVELOPMENT OF POTTERS IN NEW DELHI

SETTING UP OF A POTTERS’ CLUSTER 

IN NEW DELHI

South Asia Foundation (SAF) has been working, for nearly two decades, through various initiatives to improve the people to people contact and cooperation within South Asia. It has worked with artisans, cultural and social activists, policy planners, artists, filmmakers, NGO’s et al to design and implement programs that yield sustainable results.

The Foundation has provided skill training in various handicrafts in Sikkim, UP &  Orissa. Large number of people mostly women were benefited from these programmes.

In the outskirts of Delhi, one can locate few villages that have a sizable number of Potters working to earn a decent livelihood for survival, but with dignity and honour.

Incidentally, Delhi has special attraction for these environment-friendly products where these artisan (Pot makers) use their unique creative talents and make some of the most commonly used day to day utility items, ranging from flower pots to kitchen ware to various decorative items. Interestingly, most of these products are of daily uses with attractive design, available at an affordable price. They shape these beautiful products with their own hands, literally meaning shaping their destiny with their own hands through a noble profession. A large number of people are also involved in marketing these items, thus giving them not only economic independence, through self income generation, but also an honourable living without damaging the environment.

Some of these families have been involved in this profession for decades together. Ironically, even though hard labour is involved in producing these materials, a unique creative mind is essentially required to keep pace with market trends & changing domestic demands. Keeping the price factor in mind, these artisans need to work with marketing skills so that their products are in constant demand at competitive prices, hence being able to involve the whole family through self-income generation.

The Foundation feels that these highly unorganized sectors, with need based support, can definitely improve their potential that will help them enhance their productivity, creativity & economic conditions. It is essential that organising them in a systematic manner be also of utmost importance as that will ultimately create a collective responsibility towards their profession. With larger community participation it will be a role model for sustainable development in this highly unorganized sector.

This continuity will further reduce unemployment in their community. Specially, the younger generations in these families are losing interest in this profession, as there is lack of scope, basic facilities. Ignorance to various salient features like self-employments, organising bank loan(s) and minimizing the role of middle man should be considered so as to make their products more competitive and establishing effective marketing network.

Eventually, the Foundation hopes to make a Potters’ village at the outskirts of Delhi with unique facilities so that it is a complete village in itself with required infrastructure.

It is perceived that this village when established can help them settle with dignity & honour, where all the required infrastructural facilities can be built in a phased manner. In the 70s’, Railway alone used to provide more than 20 lakh potter families self-employment everyday. But with the introduction of paper and plastic products, these people eventually lost a huge economic opportunity and resorted to odd jobs, at times leading to unemployment and even displacement & eventually migrating outside in search of livelihood.

ARTS &  CRAFTS OF DELHI

Delhi prides itself in its rich crafts tradition that struck root during the reign of Emperor Shahjahan. It was in his new city of Shahjahanabad that arts and crafts proliferated.

Artisans and crafts-persons were invited, bought, won in battles or gifted by other sovereigns. They settled within the estates, in the karkhanas (workshops) of the noblemen and princes, and nurtured their special styles & sensibilities with a finesse developed over years of learning. The evolving Shahjahanabad was a maze of avenues and alleys, dictated by trade & commerce. Specific streets derived their names and character from different crafts & occupations.

Their inheritors, painstakingly, and often against all odds, carried on the secret code of these special knowledge systems, with their fingers, their eyes, mind and soul. Today what we see as meticulously beautiful in craft, design and conception is a real testimony to this inheritance. Despite modernity and its aggressive onslaught, despite urban sharks and middlemen, many traditional crafts have survived and have evolved new parameters of aesthetic and commercial value.

Craft, unlike so-called 'fine' art, is an expression of functional necessity, directly affecting peoples' daily lives. Design intervention and adaptations have rejuvenated some crafts which are alive and pulsating in the labyrinthine lanes of Delhi. Delhi has the seat of many crafts specially zari & zardozi, miniature paintings, jewellery of various metals, musical instruments, terracotta and blue potteries, glazed and ceramic potteries, etc. The tradition of the Delhi school of miniature painting has continued from the time of Emperor Jehangir.

Today Hazarilal of Old Delhi is the only practitioner of the Delhi Blue Potteries that were used for the blue tiles of pre-Mughal and Mughal domes, a style inherited from Persia.

History of Potters’ Village in Delhi

Even though there is no written history about potters’ settlement in Delhi but potters of Uttam Nagar at the outskirts of New Delhi are believed to have been settled through the initiative of the then Prime Minister of India, Smt. Indira Gandhi, in 1968. The first potters’ settlement of Delhi was Bindapur, adjacent to Uttam Nagar. The settlement of Uttam Nagar is a unique case of group migration and solidarity.

Bindapur and then Uttam Nagar were carved out to rehabilitate 500 odd potters families migrated from various parts of Rajasthan, Haryana and neighbouring Uttar Pradesh. Today, that area has the concentration of huge potters families scattered and expanded to Vikas Nagar, Vikaspuri, Mohan Nagar & Uttam Nagar. The area which was created to cater 500 potters’ families, in 1968, is congested with a huge population of potters and non-potters settlers due to increase in the family size and successive migrations from the neighbouring states. These have put tremendous pressure on the amenities & little infrastructures over the years, thus, leading to lack of basic amenities in adjoining areas.

Sainik Enclave, off Uttam Nagar came into existence in 1978 with large number of potters from the neighbouring states settling there & started their livelihood through artistic potteries. There are more than 900 potters’ families, making small diyas (lamps) to large pottery items that decorate posh houses to plush hotels in Delhi. Their products are sold in various roadside shops, to middlemen & to state sponsored marketing events.

Delhi, that had been the homes of many craftsmen, is fast encountering with the fact that craftsmen are picking up odd jobs due to paucity of markets and economic consideration. Some of the finest crafts have already turned into languishing crafts. If adequate protection and support is not given, some crafts will disappear from Delhi eventually.