Profit is a four-letter word

Iremember that a couple of years ago when a woman had walked into the crafts shop that I run, I happened to be there. She looked around and realising that I was the owner asked whether I ran the NGO, which had produced all the stuff that we were selling. “Are the products so bad that you think they are made by an NGO,” I asked. She was quite taken aback. I explained to her that in my mind an NGO-run crafts shop conjures up a vision of products on display coated in dust and looking rather orphaned.

I might be biased in my ideas of NGOs, probably limited by the few that I have encountered or too brainwashed into the private enterprise model having spent many years of my life in Mumbai. But the love for the “non-profit” in Bengal truly gets my goat. And probably the reason for my acerbic tone with the well-meaning question.

Tagore in his time had set up a vocational training institution to run parallel to his university. This was because of his immense faith in craft and its ability to create jobs. The vocational training institute, Shilpa Sadan, continues to train students in textile weaving, leather work, woodwork and pottery. Although for many reasons the kind of students this institute now manages to attract seem to share a less-than-middle-class background.

As the students go through the residential course in Santiniketan they acquire godfathers or well-wishers. These are typically elderly men or women who feel that these students need “support”. Since many of them neither have the financial wherewithal nor the physical ability to do much else, this “support” typically comprises introducing them to people who they think can help.

Since I run an enterprise that now provides livelihood to about 150 artisans, many think I have some magic wand by which I can transform crude pottery, rickety woodwork or indifferent textiles into saleable products. So, often I am asked whether a student can keep his creations at my “counter” (the mofussil term for shop or retail outlet).

I have to politely refuse, offering instead to speak to the student in order that he/she can upgrade his/her skills and make the products more saleable. But, often I realise that with students who have little exposure, it is difficult to explain what exactly would appeal to an urban consumer who would be willing to pay a premium for a handmade product. I often wonder what happens to all these students who pass out each year and feel sad that we have not been able to, as a generation, live up to the vision that Tagore had.

More recently, some residents have begun to approach me to stock the creations of their sons or daughters who have been to design schools like NID or NIFT and say rather magnanimously “pay them only if they sell”. I realise that enterprise is not what middle-class Bengalis are familiar with and asking them why I would rent space, employ sales staff to stock other people’s creations would be pointless.

So I say it in the language that they all understand. I tell them that my shop feeds 150 artisans. If I stock creations of others, I am afraid that I will not be able to provide work to those already associated with us. They immediately understand. Even if I can’t be of any use to them I am at least “helping” others.

A contractual relationship between an employer and employee is somehow unacceptable. There is always a feudal undertone.