In Udaipuria, a village in the northwestern Indian state of Rajasthan, sits a shoe cobbler. His hands, much like his products, are brown and leathery. He has been making shoes—in his case, ethnic mojaris—for almost 50 years. Over this time, he has sculpted innumerable shoes, taught innumerable apprentices, and observed innumerable changes in the business.
“When I began making shoes, they were all for kissans, for farmers,” he says, not missing a beat from hammering a new shoe to life. “That is not what happens anymore. A few of us still make shoes for farmers, but most work goes to big cities.”
Such has been the case since 1997, when the UNDP (UN Development Program) and RUDA (Rural Non-Farm Development Agency) launched “Operation Mojari.” Recognizing the potential urban market for Rajasthani shoes, this program was designed to help artisans to thrive well beyond their home villages. As a result, Rajasthani shoemakers began to see markets and money they never before imagined—that is, until the intervention ended and market forces resumed.
The story of mojaris is an important one in international development. It says how, with concerted efforts, one can create a modern market for traditional goods. It also says how comprehensive interventions, though difficult to design, are entirely possible to execute. More interestingly, the story tells us that for such interventions to be sustainable, they need to have comprehensive exit plans that respect market dynamics.
In the beginning, Operation Mojari (OpM) surpassed everybody’s expectations. World-class designers were invited to create snazzy new shoes for artisans to recreate, ones that were ripe for urban consumption. Artisans were taught how to size their shoes according to international standards, how to differentiate left from right feet, and how to quality control their work. A few lucky shoemakers were even transported to shoe fairs in faraway Delhi and Mumbai to better understand what their customers wanted.
During the golden years of OpM, mojaris sold like hot dosas across the country. Consumers loved the designs, the comfort, and the quality. Some shoes were even taken to an international convention in Dusseldorf, where they did quite well.
Life changed for villagers in Udaipuria and beyond. Mud huts gave way to brick houses, people began purchasing mobile phones, and television satellites began to dot the rural landscape. Artisans accustomed to earning a meager Rs. 3-5 (USD 0.06 – 0.10) per pair of mojari, began receiving triple that. Many Rajasthani farmers, frustrated with life in the fields, began seeing shoe-making as a viable alternative. Some enterprising villagers even became shoe aggregators, selling bundles of mojaris to salesmen in burgeoning Indian metros.
In 2001, a year before the intervention was slated to end, OpM helped set up SMART (Society for the Marketing of Artisans and Rural Things), whose objective it was to improve the lives of mojari artisans. [Small aside: Rural THINGS?! Is that the best they could do?] Structured as a non-profit, SMART was basically designed to help create market linkages for the artisans, so shiny new mojaris could touch urban soles long after OpM vanished. Though not in the original plans, OpM masterminds were hopeful that SMART would help shoemakers thrive once the formal intervention was complete.
Unfortunately, SMART never had the, well, smarts to get anywhere meaningful. They would frequently send shoes back to artisans citing “quality issues,” without paying for the raw material consumed in the process. They also made the artisans spend time and money traveling to Jaipur, which many saw as unnecessary. As a result, SMART only had at most 400 artisans in their network—leaving the rest of Rajasthan’s ~70,000 artisans to existing market forces.
Approximately 2-3 years after the UNDP/RUDA program ended, the mojari industry began its downward spiral. Urban salespeople began complaining to the rural aggregators that their designs were outdated and as a result, needed to lower their prices. The aggregators, knowing there were no new designs forthcoming (the UNDP designers were long gone, and few artisans were capable of designing urban-savvy shoes), immediately complied by having artisans reduce the quality of their products. With the reduced quality, mojaris became a shoe intended for middle- and lower middle-class consumers, as opposed to the up-market predecessors.
Worse, since the artisans were never formally organized, a dirty price war ensued. The artisans who were willing to provide their goods for the lowest price “won,” while those who continued to make high-quality shoes lost business.
Artisans were largely on their own, clueless about how to solve the situation. Not only was the price per shoe declining fast, shopkeepers wanted to keep lower quanities of mojaris. Many began to flee the industry altogether, preferring to toil in the fields than to remain a part of this dying business.
Bystanders were stunned. OpM had such good intentions, received such good press – where did it go wrong?
According to Malcolm Harper, OpM’s major shortcoming was that it didn’t thoughtfully consider long-term sustainability. SMART was more an afterthought than anything, and its execution was remarkably poor. OpM managers should have anticipated the market forces, the need for new designs, and the price war.
Today, there are at least 30,000 households still in the business, each of whom earn marginally more than before the intervention. What is their future?
Some, such as ACCESS Development Services, have toyed with the idea of developing producer companies. Artisans will still be self-employed, but will amalgamate their products so as to demand base prices from the market. These collectives can interact directly with export houses, access collective loans for raw materials, and contract designers on an ongoing basis. From the outside, it sounds like the perfect middle road for Rajasthan’s shoemakers.
There are many doubts, however, with this relatively untested path. Harper, for instance, is not sure how many artisans the market can support before there is an over-supply of shoes. These collectives, he argues, need to be flexible enough to allow members to diversify into other leather products. Others question how viable self-governed rural collectives are—in the long run, will they command necessary respect in urban and international markets?
Once such kinks are smoothened, however, proponents believe that collectives will help empower artisans more than ever before. Not only will they allow shoemakers to become viable contenders in urban markets, they will present consumers with an alternative to factory-produced wares. At the very least, producer collectives will mark a new, innovative method to involve rural artisans in urban markets.
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