Women who don’t normally sit on the loom, but do all the intricate preparation work and post work, have learned to weave in Rajasar village, home to large shepherd community. In Rajasar, our collaboration with the Desi Oon Hub, has resulted in development of the value chain from fiber to fabric and development of everything in between. This has meant working with shepherds, putting in place infrastructure to help them shear the sheep, sort the wool, card it and then spin it One of the key transformations that we strive to bring about is a shift in mindset from weaver to weaver - entrepreneur, keeping the market in mind. This means first of all valuing what you do , seeing its potential, and investing one’s time, skills and energy to give it your best. If you are a part of rangSutra, you have the choice to invest a small amount – whatever possible, as an investment in the company, thus giving weavers a stake in the profits apart from ensuring regular work. Another important quality required in transformation is taking leadership – for your own actions. We believe that everyone has this quality and given a chance it can come to the fore. For weavers it means taking that step to manage ones own time, and learning the skills to ensure good quality weaving that will sell in the market. For all of them it has meant leaving the comfort of home based weaving to weaving at a central location in their village.


A few weavers led the way and the rest followed, and now all rangSutra’s weavers work out of village centres – in some cases they are makeshift ones and in some cases proper structures built for handloom weaving. A third important quality is professionalism – being accountable, respectful, ethical, dedicated and committed to honoring what one has agreed to doing or being part of.

Image: Sumita Ghose with women handloom weavers