News for '-dastkar'

Zahida Amin: The new face of Kashmir

'Zahida Amin and her group of village women have gained a better understanding of India.'

Why Mr Jaitley needs to listen to Mr Gehlot

'I don't know how long the small-scale handmade sector can survive,' a shoemaker from Hisar tells Geetanjali Krishna.

Designs for the grassroots

The lessons of 1984

'I don't think the Congress party has learned any lessons from 1984. What can they have learnt when the Sikh victims are still to get justice?'

When Delhi burnt

'It was not guilt; it was shame'

Strange case of why the handloom board was abolished

When Nitin Gadkari was president of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the party had announced it would set up a separate ministry for handlooms and handicraft. Instead of doing that, the BJP government has abolished the only institution that took into account the voice of the weavers.

None of us want to be 'tolerated', we want to be ourselves

I love India and intend to live and die here, but I also want to be able to freely question its imperfections. Just as I have the freedom to say that Islam has been hijacked by a gang of demonic and utterly vile hoodlums and that the rest of us Muslims seem helpless to combat this evil, says Laila Tyabji.

Bitter home truths from a chaiwala

'People like me worry about our next meal, not about what meat we eat... and we certainly don't have the luxury that you have, of holding vigils for faceless people we've never known.'

Stree Shakti: The sisterhood of stitching

Anjuli Bhargava meets the women of Stree Shakti, an organization that is helping women in Uttarakhand's villages to supplement their family income.

Celebrity speak: What is the best thing about Budget?

Here's what celebrities had to say about Arun Jaitley's Budget.

Re-inventing Khadi, the independent label way

Khadi is the perfect fabric for the country.

No Achche Din for Varanasi's traditional handloom weavers

As India's top designers including Tarun Tahiliani, Vikram Phadnis, David Abraham, Rohit Bal, Rajesh Pratap Singh and Wendell Rodricks gather in Varanasi today to try and give a boost to the Benarasi handloom sari, in an initiative by designer turned BJP politician Shaina NC, Rashme Sehgal outlines the crisis facing the weavers.