: Rare Silk Helps Weavers Earn Up to 900% More, Thanks to an Engineer #IndiaNEWS Born and raised in Bihar’s Banka town, Udyan Singh moved to Delhi in 2006 to complete his studies in civil engineering.

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Rare Silk Helps Weavers Earn Up to 900% More, Thanks to an Engineer #IndiaNEWS
Born and raised in Bihar’s Banka town, Udyan Singh moved to Delhi in 2006 to complete his studies in civil engineering. He found a stable job with the Indian Railways but later quit to try his hand at ad filmmaking.  
He moved to Mumbai where he worked on several advertisements and a television serial, ‘Ek Aangan Ke Ho Gaye Do’, for Doordarshan.  
The 38-year-old stayed away from his hometown for nearly six years believing that there was no future in this small town. And he was partly right.  
The town’s heritage weaving culture of Banka silk was in doldrums. Thousands of weavers were struggling to make money from an artwork that was once the pride of the region.  
Udyan Singh
Being a native, he was already aware about the plight of the weavers but now his occasional visits to the town opened his eyes to the widening gap between the big cities and smaller towns. Udyan no longer wanted to be a mere spectator and decided to take matters in his own hand.  
He raised close to Rs 25 lakh from his own pocket, and his friends and family to start ‘Banka Silk’ — a social enterprise to create a domestic and international market for the silk weavers in 2015.  
In the last six years, Udyan has been able to impact the lives of thousands of weavers by providing a stable income, getting designers and experts from the weaving industry to train the weavers and giving education to their children.  
Bringing such a large-scale on-ground impact that has improved the financial conditions of several people and at the same time made the indigenous silk famous nationwide is no mean feat.  
The Better India speaks to Udyan about his decision to forgo lucrative opportunities, what makes banka silk so special and his experience of showcasing saris, apparels and more on prestigious platforms like India Runway Week and Jamshedpur Fashion Week.
Empowering artisans 

Although Udyan was well-versed with the culture, language and regional issues, it took him months to find a breakthrough in his project.  
The most daunting task was to end the cycle of debt and loans that artisans took to purchase raw materials. He did so by availing government microfinance schemes for the artisans. He formed a handloom cluster and through the organisation applied for various benefits.  
“The weavers have been trapped by the middle-men and loan sharks over the years. Due to lack of education, they are unable to demand for a fair price and take whatever they get to feed their families. During my research I found some artisans barely making Rs 30 per day. The government also has not done much to nurture or promote the local talent like they did for Bhagalpur and South Silk,� says Udyan.

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