16,000 women working round the clock to stitch flags

Arjun Sharma

Jammu, August 10

Women in villages along the Line of Control, which once witnessed bullets and bombs being hurled from the other side of the border, are these days busy sewing national flags under the Har Ghar Tiranga campaign.

Around 200 women in Rajouri villages are working day and night to complete the order of 20,000 flags. Mostly Muslims, they come from poor background with no regular family income. This is for the first time that women under different self-help groups (SHGs) are stitching flags and earning money. These SHGs are registered with J&K Rural Livelihoods Mission (JKRLM) which helps them procure the material needed to make the flags.

Tasveer Begum from Dehri Ralyot, Manjakote, Rajouri says she never thought that she would stitch something that is of national pride. “Our flags will be atop homes across the country,” she says. Her husband runs a small grocery shop in the village. She mostly makes pickle. When the JKRLM reached out to women for flags, she readily agreed.

There are 16,000 women making flags across J&K. Most of them have completed their work and flags are now being sent to different districts and states to be distributed among people before the Independence Day.

Javid-ul-Sofi, Rajouri Programme Manager of JKRLM, said, “These women earn a profit of Rs 8 on each Tricolour. The cost of material for the Tricolour is Rs 22 and we pay them Rs 8 on each flag. A total of 20,000 flags have been sewn by women in Rajouri.”

Each SHG has around 8-10 members who gather in an open space or a building every morning for the stitching work. Those having the knowledge of tailoring sew flags while others are tasked with packing or ironing the same.

Indu Kanwal Chib, Mission Director, JKRLM, said, “Earlier 11,000 women were asked to sew flags in J&K. After getting good response, more self-help groups were roped in and the number of women swelled to nearly 16,000. We witnessed an encouraging response from women even in Kashmir where they worked hard and completed the orders. The campaign provided them money and made their connection with the nation stronger.”

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