The beginnings - a few months down.

June 2016

Annapurna, Shyamala, Anita and Rani are busy with their cloth bag making. They are maintaining the accounts. They are going and getting the cloth sent by lorry from Madurai. They are sitting together and cutting out the cloth and dividing the peices, and stitching in their homes. And again parcelling it out to the customer. 

I am not in the village. They are handling it competently on their own. I am simply making some phone calls and emails and doing some clerical work for them. I know village women for long enough now to know how totally capable they are. And honest and sensible, and capable of working as a group.

My friend has a group which is trying to promote cloth bags by distributing free to local people and local small shops and advocating eschewing plastic bags. The local shopkeepers are told to ask their customers to bring these bags again. He says it goes on successfully. It is an excellent idea which should be replicated. It protects the earth from plastics, and also creates work for Annapurna, Shyamala, Anita and Rani.