An Ode to Odisha by Gunjan Jain

The handloom & handicraft sector is the second biggest employer in rural India after agriculture. A huge industry of handmade booms in local rural & urban markets across the country. The handloom sector requires few resources and the entire process of creating a handmade fabric has a very low carbon footprint. Most raw materials are sourced from nature and the use of electric machines is almost nil. It is small scale and involves both men and women in producing the textile, which teaches self-reliance, sufficiency and symbolic resistance to mass- produce. A meter of handwoven fabric requires an inter-dependency between the farmer, ginners, spinners, dyers, carpenters, weavers, and many more people. This dependency is not hierarchical but cohesive, not self-centered but a mutual interest in survival. It's a celebration of weaving lives together.