As Noori uses her nimble fingers to weave in and out the colourful rexine strips and long strands of dried straw on the bamboo mudda she is giving shape to, she laughs to be asked her age. “Must be around 75,” she says, while her granddaughter vehemently disagrees. “Over 80 for sure,” the latter says, picking up a half-made mudda that stands among the stack surrounding her grandma.

This is Chak Nagla Beeza village in the Rupwas tehsil of Rajasthan’s Bharatpur district, home to the Jatav Scheduled Castes community. Here almost every third adult is either a creative mudda producer or involved in rope-making.

Most of them are now also adept at marketing the muddas in the haats (village markets) or nearby towns.

About 30 km from Bharatpur town, the village has been traditionally involved in handwork and has made muddas for a living for several generations. But urbanisation and migration took a toll and most of the talented mudda -makers moved to small towns or big cities. At one point, those left behind had little to do but till their tiny plots of land for a subsistence living.

“The tall grasses with which the mudda is made grow beside their fields. It has to be collected, dried, straightened and turned into rope. So we did what we do best. We studied the skills of the population and their local business avenues, reached out to the existing resource and helped them transform mudda -making into their primary livelihood,” explains Swati Samvatsar, Chief Programme Manager of Lupin Human Welfare & Research Foundation, a development organisation that has been working in the region for over two decades.

The foundation also pitches in with microfinance at crucial stages and pulls out when the project becomes capable of standing on its own feet.

“However, we continue to help with design inputs, marketing strategies and fetching orders from across the country,” says Samvatsar, as she checks a mudda that has been fashioned with a massive backrest.

What made a big difference to the mudda makers was the training offered in their village itself. “Earlier we used to make muddas only of straw and it would sell for very little. But ever since we changed our designs, introduced colourful rexine strips and improved bamboo quality, we are able to sell each mudda for ₹100,” says 46-year-old Soundey, who has been making muddas for the past 20 years.

He rattles off the input costs: “₹10 for the bamboo, ₹1 for the old tyre, ₹15 for the rope and a bit more for the coloured strips. The rest is our effort...”

“Now we have mudda buyers coming all the way from Mumbai. They give us an advance and we execute their orders for all the 12 months of the year,” says 35-year-old Santa Devi, whose entire family is involved in the manufacturing process.

Working collectively they earn a neat sum, as each of them can produce four or five muddas a day, depending on the size. “If it is one of the big ones, then we manage to make just one in a day. In a month, on an average, we earn ₹4,000-5,000,” says Soundey.

That the village is thriving on this livelihood is for all to see, but will the children follow the trade? “They have picked up the skill, but they also go to school,” says Noori, shrugging her shoulders to imply that ‘what will be, will be’.

“But we have made a name for ourselves. We are known as the village of mudda makers in Rajasthan and that will hold us in good stead,” sums up Badan Singh, a local and the Lupin representative at the grassroots.

The writer visited the area at the invitation of Lupin Foundation

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