Low attendance of kaarigars at many embroidery-making factories in Mumbai

Several fashion brands including luxury labels source their embroideries from India for excellent craftsmanship and lesser costs. However, the COVID-19 pandemic and the following lockdown, has left the kaarigars with little to no work.

Mumbai, which is known to be the centre of embroidery making, has some of the largest embroidery houses – with some of them boasting of reputed clients like Christian Dior, Valentino, Zuhair Murad and many more.

With such established customers, India’s reputation for a sourcing hub of embroideries has declined.

Most of this is due to the lockdown that lasted more than 3 months. Many of the workers worked on daily wages and while the lockdown restrictions didn’t allow any kind of travel, kaarigars were left with no option other than migrating back to their hometowns.

Purnima Exports is based in the Sewri area of Mumbai and has clients in various countries; however, their representative was disappointed when none of the workers showed up to work. She mentioned that since the lockdown has been lifted, none of the workers have returned to work even when there are pending orders from clients that need completion. All of the kaarigars belonged to states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, where they moved back due to the lockdown.

Then there is another house, Charisma Fashions, which supplies to various clients in the US; their purchasing head, Mohammed Sayed, expressed the lack of manpower in his factory which is near Masjid Bunder. Even after the State Government’s announcement of attendance of a maximum of 10 per cent of the workforce, Sayed mentioned that only 4 workers showed up to the factory against the nearly 100 which they employed before the lockdown.

One of the employers who have come to rescue for the kaarigars in Mumbai is Saks India. They have collaborated with the renowned American designer Peter Dundas, who has designed for celebrities like Beyonce.

According to Madhavi Pal of Saks India, a pair of T-shirts called the ‘quaran-T’ is designed by Peter, which will employ kaarigars from Saks to create embroideries on the T-shirt.

The T-shirts will be available for purchase through a lottery system. Priced at Rs. 2,500 and Rs. 4,000, the lottery tickets for both the T-shirts will generate funds which will be donated to clusters of kaarigars based in Mumbai.