Adilabad: Ahead of the Bathukamma festival, leaders of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) have discovered a new technique to improve textile quality and meet people’s expectation – take God’s blessings for saris perceived to be of bad quality and pass them off as ‘holy’.
Fearing another year where saris, gifts from the government for the women of Telangana, would get rejected en masse for their poor quality, a repeat of last year’s experience, TRS leaders are adding an iota of divine aura to them to get them accepted.
TRS MLAs and leaders are decorating village deities across the state with the Sircilla-woven Bathukamma saris before starting their distribution to beneficiaries.
With this move, they are sure all possible protests from women over poor quality of saris would disappear After all, rural women folk are not expected to refuse a gift from God.
The scheme, besides winning the hearts of women, is aimed at creating greater demand, and thus employment, to traditional weavers who get bulk orders for weaving Bathukamma saris by the government. This new trend has caught on fast during distribution of saris in all villages and towns.
The state government has planned for free distribution of saris, with a blouse, to all women members of the over 1 crore white ration cardholders, at an estimated cost of `350 crore, with an aim to provide continuous work to poor weavers and eliminate suicides.
The party has been at the receiving end last year from women who rejected their gift, saying the saris were of very low quality.
This new trend, a precaution given the party’s lack of surety about the quality of saris, to first offer them local goddess, hopes to frighten women beneficiaries and invoke superstitious pressures to accept them respectfully, to avoid inviting the wrath of the divine. Last year, at some places, women played Bathukamma around the saris, and later abandoned them on roads sides in erstwhile Karimnagar district.
Rekha Naik, MLA, Khanapur decorated Sargamma, the local village deity with a sari, before distributing saris in Dasthurabad in Nirmal district. Satyawati Rathod, tribal welfare minister, offered a sari to Sammakka Saralamma, a traditional bamboo deity, in Warangal on Monday.
