The Vanishing World of the Julahas: The Current Crisis and Its Consequences

I write this chapter during the twilight years of the Banarasi sari industry. During the last 10 years or so, the glimmerings of the onset of the crisis were discernible, but it took a few years for the crisis to acquire the full-blown proportions which now characterise it. As Mainuddin Ansari, from Kotwa, put it: ‘There has been no happiness for the last 15 years, and for the last 7-8 years, there has been no employment.’1