'Why one price fits all' does not work.
When consumer loses touch with producer, the price tag often decides his decision. There are far more important details than the price tag.
The producer himself. His realities. The product itself. Its truths
The responsibility of the consumer to the fabric of life.
In a very remote village like Paalaguttapalle, there are many invisible details.
1. There is no NGO here. Just a few friends who are in our spare time helping them. The women have to, out of their savings, manage everything, including painstakingly build up their own working capital.
2. In remote villages, the electricity is erratic. The women spend a whole day getting the things ready for the making the screen for screen printing and then the current fails. They try to expose in sunlight, but the sun also plays truant.The whole coat needs to be scrubbed away, and the screen, and the day put away.
If the voltage is erratic, the expensive high power lamp can blow up, and then there may be no way to get it repaired even in Tirupathi, 70 km away, and a replacement has to got from far away Chennai.
3. There is no way to access cloth on demand. It has to come from far away Madurai or Erode by lorry or railway.
When the women go to Tirupathi to get the stencil and paints, the paints may not be in stock. There are only 2 paint shops.
So scarce money needs to be invested in keeping sufficient supplies of everything handy.
4. All costs overheads are high in an interior village. The overheads of transport are high. The cloth, by the time it comes to the village has many extra costs. The posting means trips to town. Bus connection is poor, and substantal auto charges of 500/- add up.
A sewing machine breakdown means it has to be taken to Tirupathi, 50km away. the auto charge is over 1500/-.
Every trip made means a day and the cost of the journey, with a 4km walk to the busstop thrown in.
... a moral economics needs to factor all that in, to ensure fair livelihoods. This holds on every front, and in every narrative. Everywhere.
Dear S, Iam sure you will find low cost bags if you search. There are many bulk manufacturers who would also have mechanized processes.
But if you concern is also livlihoods for those seeking livlihoods then it would need a different prism of thinking. Handmade is cosrlier than mechanized processes. Villages that are remote have many more overheads, and also smaller volumes. That raises their costs. Also in drought when families have to sustain on this, one needs to pay a price that allows them some fair nourishment possibilities for their children.
The low cost bags you may get will be paying their workers the lowest returns possible, even taking all advantages of bulk and scale. That much I can figure out from my understandings of the bag economics.
It is always good to source, understanding how the producer lives and works and what she needs.
Thanks a lot, and will be happy to help you any time, Aparna
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