It takes a coconut husk, a spinning wheel and three pairs of female hands to turn out a bundle of coir into rope, after the coir has been separated from the husk and further beaten to be separated into strands.
Yet at the end of the process the group has to share a meagre Rs.300 among themselves.
This traditional cottage industry is sometimes, the sole family income. In the village of Wawwa in Devi Numawara, string weaving is the only means of livelihood available to some of its inhabitants.
As if this was not bad enough, life has become more difficult for these people with the rapid increase in the cost of coconuts.
They now have to pay more for the husks, while a length of rope fetches just Rs. 5 in the wholesale market
Earlier a coconut husk cost 50 cents. Today a husk costs Rs. 2.50 lamented 50-year-old Kankanamgedera R. Mangalika who has been in the trade along with her aged mother and sister for the past 25 years.
Politicians always say "we must protect traditional cottage industries since it is a part of the country's heritage," but when it comes to providing relief to people involved -like us- they fall silent, she added.
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| Spinning of the rope… the old system continues unchanged. |
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| Seperating the coir into separate strands is a back-breaking business |
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| The process of separating coir from the husk |
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