UP: Shilpkars of Jhansi Struggle to Make Ends Meet

For the past three decades, 55-year-old Kusuma Kumar’s days have followed the same routine more or less. She wakes up at around 5 in the morning. After freshening up, picks up her hammer and chisel at around 6 a.m, and works her way through the stones to make grinding stones or sil battas.

Kusuma has been making these grinding stones since she was 5 years old and on most days, she can’t afford to pay much attention to the bandages that cover the cuts on her hands from the previous day.

“We are 20 families living here (in the lane) with just one hand pump and one public toilet. You can imagine how neglected we are by the government,” Kusuma said as she continued to work in her one-room house in Jhansi in Uttar Pradesh. Her house is a structure built with three walls made of mud and brick, supported by bamboo poles covered with tarpaulin and plastic sheets.

Despite the schemes for uplift of handicraft artistes, 20 families of artisans/sculptors or shilpkars living in Shilpkar Basti, near Sipri Bazar, are struggling to sustain themselves and their art with no proper house registry, no subsidy on electricity, and a decline in sales.

They are not considered eligible for the Babasaheb Ambedkar Hastshilp Vikas Yojana as stone carving is reportedly not a prominent art form in the city. The community was relocated from the Tehsil area and were assigned plot areas farther from the city, but they have not been given residency rights yet.

 “Since 2000, despite repeated complaints, we haven’t been provided any compensation for displacement or any housing benefits,” said Lal Bahadur Shashtri, an artisan. 

“We don’t receive any government aid under schemes meant for handicraft artistes because the schemes don’t cover stone carving as a profession. Also, we don’t get any space provided by the government to sell our products in the Jhansi Mahotsav. There is no initiative to encourage our work,” said Narendra Kumar, who claimed that his family has been making stone utensils since the era of Rani Laxmibai or Jhansi Ki Rani (who fought the British colonial rulers). 

Each of the 20 families in the area has about five members each and all of them are engaged in making sculptures of god, nameplates, atta chaki (manual wheat grinder made of stone), and the traditional sil batta, which is an age-old tool used to prepare spice mixes for traditional Indian cuisine.

Artisans like Kusuma spend almost seven to eight hours a day shaping and designing one sil batta (grinding stone) by hand. “I sit and carve a stone the whole day and then if it sells, we get some money to eat something that day. Earlier, more people used to buy these. But now, there are fancy items like mixer-grinders. So, the sales have dropped a lot,” she said.

She sells the smaller sil battas for Rs 200-300 and the bigger ones for Rs 500.

“If someone buys a grinding stone, they won’t come for it again. So, some weeks, I earn up to Rs 2,000-3,000 and sometimes, the whole week goes by and I don’t earn anything,” she added.

Selling the grinding stones is the only skill she has to earn a livelihood and feed her family. Sales were good enough five to six years ago, she told NewsClick.

Kusuma and others in the basti (colony) say they have benefited from the Pradhan Mantri Ujwala Yojna under which they got a gas stove and an LPG cylinder connection. But because of fluctuating income, buying refilling the LPG cylinder is unaffordable at times. On top of this, the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns have made making money a much more difficult task.

Women and men from the community actively take part in the work, which, according to them, has been going on in their families for ages as a pratha (tradition). In most of the families, men do the work of carving the stone and making patterns using electric cutters, while women break the bigger stones into smaller ones using hammer and chisel. Many younger men from the community have also started seeking work as contract labourers, working in shops, and as construction workers.

The stones used by the shilpkars include Jhansi red granite, marble, and Sajjar stone. Although, with modernisation, many artisans use electric tools like stone cutters for carving the designs on stone, most of the work of shaping the stone is still done using hammers and chisels.

Once Kusuma is done making grinding stones, she packs three or four of them in a jute bag, each weighing one to two kilos, and visits nearby localities to sell them.

“People in localities who cannot afford expensive mixer- grinders buy this sil batta. Sometimes, people come to our basti to buy these,” she said.

Echoing Narendra’s claim, locals say that the tradition of stone carving work in their families dates back to the era of Rani Laxmibai. After India’s Independence, however, some of these people migrated to other parts of the state like Agra, Varanasi, and Banda where they worked with other local artisans and continued the stone craftwork.

No Residency Rights

With regard to residency rights, a senior official in the property department of the Jhansi Nagar Nigam said: “The land that the Shilpkar Basti is built on belongs to the Nagar Nigam. So, we have full rights to displace them for any other project on this land. We will make sure that they are provided proper residence under PMAY (PM Awas Yojana), if they are displaced.”

But most people from the community have no hope that the promises of residency rights made by ministers and government officials will ever be fulfilled.

“Dalali bina halai nahi hoti (If you don’t bribe officials, nothing gets done),” said Narendra, summing up the community’s experience.

With their business slowly dying, the community now has pinned all hopes pinned on the younger generation. They want their children to get educated, leave the basti, and start a “proper life”.

“I hope my kids grow up and become something… Nahi to ye mara hua dhanda hi karna padega (Or else they’ll also have to be involved in this already-dying stone carving business),” Narendra added.

The writer is a freelance content/feature writer and is currently pursuing post-graduate studies in journalism.