The fabric arrives in the villages in and around Lucknow, with designs already stamped on it. Women then spend days, sometimes weeks, following those patterns with needle and thread. The sewn fabrics are then taken to places across India and abroad, with a hefty price tag attached to them — for the time and expertise spent creating them — yet, for the women who embroider them, the earnings are only a fraction of the final value.
Taking into account this disparity, an upcoming initiative of the Yogi Adityanath government seeks to shorten that long journey between the artisan’s needle and the customer’s price tag.
A world-renowned, GI-tagged hand-embroidery tradition associated with Lucknow, Chikankari is celebrated for its delicate thread-work. It is Lucknow’s designated product under Uttar Pradesh’s One District One Product (ODOP) programme, but the craft has spread into neighbouring districts such as Sitapur, where rural women remain part of its production network.
For Reshma Khatoon, 42, the economics of the craft are painfully real. She has been in the trade for about 10 years, distributing fabric brought from Lucknow among women artisans in villages around Sidhauli and collecting the embroidered pieces. The fabric arrives already stamped with the design.
The artisans mount it on wooden frames and spend days, sometimes weeks, filling the patterns with needle and thread. Simpler pieces take about a week, while finer work can take a month to a month and a half.
But the harder the work, the more inadequate the returns can seem. “Why should we strain so much for such miserable wages?” Reshma recalls other artisans telling her before moving to daily-wage labour or other work.
Reshma says work that took a month and a half to complete eventually retails for as much as `15,000, but returns about `5,000 at the community level.
“By the time middlemen take away their cuts at different stages, only a fraction of the final value reaches the artisan who actually worked on the fabric,” she says.
Reshma’s three daughters, all school-going, have also begun picking up the craft by watching their mother work, keeping alive a skill passed down through generations.
Meanwhile, K Vijayendra Pandian, Commissioner & Director of Industries & Enterprise Promotion, UP, says the second edition of ODOP will ensure better artisan earnings.
“ODOP 2.0 will focus on export-oriented markets, while Common Facilitation Centres will aggregate artisans and provide marketing support,” Vijayendra tells TNIE.
“The state has also facilitated tie-ups with Flipkart, Amazon and Meesho, besides pursuing associations with established brands such as Lucknow-based Ada,” he adds.
The official said the government was also working with NIFT and other organisations on new designs, allowing artisans to move beyond repetitive patterns that often command lower margins.
For Reshma, the stakes remain deeply personal. Her husband died six years ago, and Chikankari is the livelihood she relies on to support her daughters. For thousands of artisans like her, the real test of ODOP 2.0 will be whether more of the price paid for Chikankari finally reaches the hands that create it.