Looms of Ladakh: What We Stand For

Looms of Ladakh is a rural women’s cooperative movement working to establish Ladakh’s textile cottage industry. The farm-to-fashion initiative is working towards giving due recognition to the pashmina, yak, sheep, and Bactrian camel wool-raising communities while empowering these local women by giving them employment opportunities while building Ladakh’s textile industry for future generations. Looms of Ladakh is a rural women’s cooperative movement to establish the textile cottage industry of Ladakh. It is a farm-to-fashion initiative committed to extending due recognition to the pashmina, yak, sheep, and Bactrian camel wool rearing communities and their artisans. The cooperative encourages women’s empowerment by allowing unemployed women from remote villages to develop their skills in making organic and designer products to sustain themselves financially and also patiently build the textile industry of Ladakh for future generations. At the outset, we had faced the challenge of coordinating the training of women by qualified master trainers and keeping the women motivated enough to complete the training over a couple of months. Another challenge was linked to bringing about convergence in the efforts of different public and private agencies. Our efforts bore fruit as we succeeded not only in training many women, but a couple of them also had learned enough to become master trainers themselves. The artisans go through basic training in hand-spinning, natural dyeing, knitting, weaving, and tailoring. Thereafter, they are initiated into the basics of textile, garment construction, and knitwear designing — mostly through hands-on training. The cooperative has been focusing especially on maintaining uniform standards in sizing and product quality — something that takes effort in the case of regions lacking traditionally organized clusters. In the normal course, the skills were mostly utilitarian and for domestic consumption and there is no evidence to suggest that the master craftsmen were passing down their skills to the new generation for the market. We observed as we took off that there was very little effort on fiber quality improvement in all the locally available wools, i.e, pashmina, yak, and sheep. The elected artisans and Design and Production Heads have started grading their member spinners according to their count. This will be discussed in the article by Nishant Raj. They are also undergoing various capacity-building programs in natural dyeing, weaving, and garment production. Most importantly, we are constantly on the lookout for managerial and leadership potential within the organization. This is important to us because we wish the brand to be truly led by the members. I recently met a tenant of one of our elected artisan leaders from six years ago who was amazed to see her work-related travels across Ladakh and India. She told us that earlier our members did not step out of their homes even to buy vegetables. On hearing this, the Design Head, the elected artisan leader and I exchanged proud glances, and the Design Head quipped, “ She has found her passion through Looms of Ladakh”. Quality control is an area of intense focus for all of us. Our work is carried out by hand and in remote villages at altitudes ranging from 9000 feet to 18000 feet. We have come up with a system of standard practices and replicable processes and are working on improving the production supply chain. This will be discussed in the upcoming issues. We are also in the process of seeking managerial assistance to put long-lasting systems in place to address such issues. We had earlier explored the Enterprise Resource Planning system with team Dhwani but could not take it forward due to the paucity of funds in the initial years. Thanks to SIDBI Swavlamban Challenge Fund, this is being developed in the next 15 months. The technical team for this is Kosha Technologies, Bangalore. We learned about them through Tata’s Taneira team and are grateful. Milee will be discussing the objectives and process of developing the ERP in her piece in detail. So far, the Looms of Ladakh flagship showroom in the main market of Leh has been the main source of sales and marketing. The COVID pandemic has affected global travel and therefore the tourist footfall in Leh was negligible for a long period. This has hit the sales significantly, but we are not very concerned because we have used this time to improve our organization and conduct the second round of the election to ensure the democratic functioning of our organization. We were doubly motivated to get the demand for holding the election from the member-owners when it was due in May 2020, that too when the first wave of COVID was at its peak. Looms of Ladakh members from the Eastern Ladakh centers have innovated on traditional backstrap looms to weave rugs and home furnishing products. The women also make table-runners. What has remained neglected in Ladakh is the need to improve the quality of sheep wool fiber that is used for making these traditional rugs and carpets. The ratio of effort that goes into making these items to the economic return is very high. To address this issue, Looms of Ladakh has been engaging with its members in Eastern Ladakh to work out a solution for improving the quality and market of these traditional crafts. From the interviews of our elected artisan leaders Mrs. Lobzang Lamo and Mrs. Dolma Chonzom, we will learn about their craft roots and their zeal to take Looms of Ladakh forward. We launched a garment range of Looms of Ladakh in November 2018 at Nehru Centre, Mayfair London with the hope of attracting attention to Looms of Ladakh being more than just stoles or yarns supplier. We were more than elated to get the interest of Okhai to work on a farm to fashion pashmina and sheep wool garment collection in February 2021 and it will be launched in this newsletter. We have studied closely the pashmina goat, the sheep, and yak in the herd of the Changthang shepherds and its speculated negative impact on the grazing pastures as witnessed in Central Asia. We have also tried to understand the merits of skill development and craft revivalism respectively. It was also observed that the pashmina trade-in Ladakh might eventually be concentrated in the hands of a few. Hence, we decided to work on this idea in an effort to find the intersection between nature, culture, and economy and to set industry standards. The idea driving Looms of Ladakh is a sense of ensuring continuity. The infrastructure for the hub and spoke model of Looms of Ladakh also keeps SDG 15 in mind and passive solar heating local earth material construction technology is being used for it. I am humbled that my vision of building a centralized quality control atelier and head office near Leh; and a prototype that spoke for a decentralized work studio in Chushul has started taking shape. Honorable Chief Executive Councillor Shri Tashi Gyalson laid the foundation stone for the first and Nabard Chairman, Government of India Shri G.R.Chintala laid the foundation stone for the second in May 2022. These two events marked a new phase in our journey in which our struggles see participation and encouragement from others translating it into a movement. We are also grateful to our team of believers — especially Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council, NabFoundation and its CEO Shri Sanjeev Rohilla, Fashion Impact Fund, ICICI Bank, EXIM Bank, Usha Silai Schools, Royal Enfield, Major Gen. Akash Kaushik, the General Officer Commanding 14 Corps of Indian Army, Chief Engineer Brigadier Rajesh Karen who provided logistics support for the construction of the Workstudio in Chushul, and Newsroom 24x7. We are creating a common structured platform for people working in silos and trying to reduce duplication of efforts. We have a long-term commitment to the true realization of the potential of the stakeholders involved in the project. Looms of Ladakh products reflect the rich heritage of the hardy and creative people of Ladakh, and to that extent, the designs are a very important media.

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Looms of Ladakh: What We Stand For

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