Over two weekends, during our ShikshaDaan Yatra, we got to meet and interact with about 80 parents from the handloom weaving community along with their children studying in 11^th and above at Dindigul and Chinnalampatti, Tamil Nadu.

We asked them our standard stock questions like, ‘What are you studying now? Why have you chosen this over other options? What is your dream? What do you plan to do after your degree program?

Before I go into their answers, some hard facts – the handloom weaving community, almost anywhere in India, is one of the most economically backward communities. On an average, a handloom weaver can weave anywhere between 8-10 saris at best in a month and can earn about Rs. 8000-10000 per month if he is part of a cooperative and the cooperative helps him get a price as close to his costs and a little margin. Otherwise, many earn as little as Rs. 80-100 per day and the handloom art is a dying art. Some organizations like Co-optex and some state governments like the Tamil Nadu government are doing great work in this space and IAS officers like the present MD of Co-optex Mr. Venkatesh Narasimhan have changed the weaver’s life for good.

Most of the weavers are not very educated and usually end up borrowing money or pawning some jewelery to get their children admitted in the colleges. The parents usually have no idea as to what their children are upto, and whether their education, paid for with their sweat and blood would really lead to better times for the family.

Coming back to their children and their answers to our questions. At an aggregated level, most of them are pursuing their engineering degree in mechanical engineering. In fact some of them had a dream to pursue medicine or agriculture but they did not have enough marks to get admission there. Very few students pursuing engineering had any clarity on why they chose engineering, and when we asked why they chose mechanical engineering, the answer was that it was the cheapest of the engineering disciplines. For most of them an engineering degree was a must to get a corporate job or as they say in Tamil Nadu, an “MNC” job. Nothing more, nothing less. The private engineering colleges have managed to convince these students that a degree from their college is a definite and only way to an MNC job. We cannot understand what counseling they offer to these students when everyone gets admission into an engineering program. It’s all about money, honey.

We shared the information in both the locations explaining to them the unfortunate reality that just 7% of engineering graduates manage to get a corporate job and the rest languish in menial jobs earning paltry salaries. Most of them have little or no fluency in English, and do not know any other language besides Tamil and Saurashtrian, their mother tongue. Not knowing English is a big disadvantage for getting a corporate job. We presented to them the buddy4study platform that collates all the 700,000 scholarships that are available in India and they were delighted to know that there were so many opportunities to get scholarships from 3^rd standard onwards.

We also highlighted the importance of getting prepared for the interview with better communication and interviewing skills that they were almost unaware and hence unprepared for. We met with managers of the weaving society in both the places and have come up with a broad framework to work with these students over a few years to ensure they get into good jobs. We would bring skill development and other experts to these locations and ensure that the students are better prepared for their future.

It was a humbling experience for Bindu and I that the handloom weavers create magic with their hands and excel in their craft, but are not necessarily worldly wise…. We wonder if most artisans are this way and our government needs to provide some sort of protection so that the art can flourish and sustain over the years, while the artisans are also well paid and are able to afford a good living standard. Much work to be done.