Natural is trendy

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Visitors at the Women of India Exhibition.

A wide variety of indigenous products from across the country are now available at an ongoing exhibition at Dilli Haat

From food and fabric to furniture, Women of India Exhibition, a ten-day-long event at Dilli Haat, is showcasing a rich variety of organic products. Interestingly, the sellers are also explaining the process of making them at the exhibition which is seeing the participation of women entrepreneurs. Working in the interiors of the country, these women offer a range of healthy organic food which is badly needed by city dwellers due to their hectic lifestyle. .

Right at the entrance there is a stall of Burda, West Bengal, which was decorated beautifully by unprocessed dried rice grains which is eye catching for visitors. The stalls, displaying a range of cereals, aromatherapy products and bio-products, have been given free of cost to the entrepreneurs from Delhi NCR and other States. Some of the women entrepreneurs are being assisted by their husbands. Shakir Ali, operating a stall of Kashmiri products, particularly shawls weaved by the female members of his family, says, “A shawl usually takes two to three months to complete as no machinery is involved in its making. The production is mainly done by women in the house by their hand and it involves minute embroidery. We use natural flower colours which makes our products absolutely organic.”

The woollen shawl is priced between Rs.2,000 and 8,000 while special Pashmina shawl starts from Rs.16,000 and goes upto Rs.2 lakh. Durga Ghosh, selling various type of rice , says, “I intend to protect 124 varieties of rice which originally belongs to West Bengal but are now on the verge of extinction due to massive use of fertilisers as farming in the fields is becoming less productive. We produce various kind of rice without using any chemical fertilisers and still we earn handsome profits as the price of organic products are much higher.”

This shows, economically too, organic farming is in demand. Organic farming ultimately reduces cost of cultivation and increases the income of farmers by improving quality of production as well as quality of soil. Better quality of produce fetches enhanced prices.

Ambika Devi from Bihar is selling paper mashed products, hand-made toys and traditional Madhubani paintings. “It takes seven to eight days to make three-foot tall toy which is made by paper mache and it takes four to five days to paint it as all the colours are natural ones. Women in their home make it under the supervision of a trained instructor and later the sales are done collectively with the help of a cooperative society which consists of mainly housewives who are working with this art form for centuries,” says the septuagenarian lady.

At the centre of the exhibition, stands a stall of the Indo Tibetan Border Police which is showcasing kiwi fruit from Arunachal Pradesh, different varieties of rajma from Himachal Pradesh and special spices from Uttarakhand. “We want to encourage people from remote areas to produce organic products and sell them at platforms like this. We intend to make the farmers self reliant and support widows of jawans of the force,” says one of the officers present at the stall.

Visitors can also have taste of variety of snacks and home cooked organic food cooked on-the-spot. Garlic and peanut chutney was tasted by visitors at a stall from Sangli, Maharashtra where the cooperative of women entrepreneurs make ready-to-eat items like pickle at village level cooperative.

The exhibition is on till November 23.