Aajgaon project: Site visit report
by Anirban Hazra

18 May 2005


Background: 

Asha Princeton took up the Aajgaon project around 2001 to set up a
pottery and ceramics training institute in Aajgaon village in
Sindhudurg district, Maharashtra. The goal of the institute was to
revive pottery and ceramic work (crafts traditional to the region) by
modernization of the production processes. Furthermore, by imparting
training in these crafts to school children, the goal was to create
possibilities for income generation for them.

In the project proposal, a significant portion of the funds was
allotted for setting up an electric kiln, which is necessary to
produce glazed ceramic articles and to make the firing process more
economical. As it turned out, the electric kiln was not set up because
it was later felt that such a kiln would not be suitable given the
frequent load shedding power cuts (Incidently most of Maharashtra
nowadays has four hour power cuts). A gas (LPG) kiln was set up
instead. This was to become a core problem as you will see below.

LKSS (Lok Kalyan Shikshan Sanstha, the NGO running the project on the
ground) while submitting the proposal did so with the understanding
that Mr. Aajgaonkar an established potter and a native of Aajgaon
would be actively involved in the project. As it turned out, some time
after the project was approved, Mr. Aajgaonkar (who is quite old, 70+)
had a neck problem was advised by his doctor to avoid physical work
and to avoid going to Aajgoan. Thus Mr. Aajgaonkar's leadership was
not directly available to the project implementers.

The project has been having trouble fulfilling its objectives and it
was not clear how Asha should continue with it. Vikas Sawant (Asha
Princeton) and Shrikant Mulik (Asha Mumbai) have been involved with
the project and have worked hard to address its problems. However, things
did not turn around and in December 2004, there was talk of closing
the project. My visit in May 2005 was to understand the situation
better so that we could come to a decision.


Location and facilities: 

I visited Aajgaon on 18th May 2005. I took the overnight bus from Pune
and reached Aajgaon (changing the bus at Sawantwadi) around 7 in the
morning on 18th May.

Aajgaon village is situated in the Konkan region, which is the coastal
strip of Maharashtra that runs north-south and lies on the west of the
Sahyadri range. Aajgaon and the nearby area is nested on the low
rolling hills that lie between the Sahyadri mountains and the Arabian
sea coast. Aajgaon is about 3 kms away from the coast and the
Maharashtra-Goa border is about 10 km to its south. The region
receives plenty of rainfall in monsoon. It is lush green and extremely
beautiful. Agriculture is the main occupation of the people.

The pottery and ceramics training center is located in the LKSS
campus. The campus has a secondary school and a D.Ed. (Diploma in
Education) college. These have been around for a while and are running
successfully. The pottery training center is on one side of the
campus, independent of the other buildings. The infrastructure
consists of one room, which contains two electric potter's wheels,
benches for students to sit, some raw materials and some finished
articles. A few feet away from this room is a shed where the furnace
for firing and glazing is housed. The center was not running while I
was visiting as that was the time for summer vacation for the school
children.

I had the impression before visiting that the clay in Aajgaon is
suitable for pottery and the clay used in the center is obtained
locally and free of cost. I learned that was not the case. It has to
be bought and transported. However this cost is very small as compared
to other costs in the production process.


Discussion with project implementers:

I met and had discussions with the coordinator and instructor Mr.
Prasad Prabhu and the two other instructors Mr. Mandvil Bagaitkar and
Mr. Rajan Mundkar. Prasad stays in Aajgaon and is responsible for the
day to day working of the center. Mandvil and Rajan come by bus and
bicycle respectively. When the center was running regularly, Mandvil
had to spend Rs. 600 for the bus out of the Rs. 1500 per month he
received as salary.

Prasad told me about the problems the center is facing. The other two
instructors were present but Prasad was more articulate and did most
of the talking. There are three issues: insufficient interest of the
community, inability of the project visionaries to be more involved
and poor infrastructure. I will elaborate on these points.

Firstly, insufficient community interest. The initial idea of a
pottery and ceramics institute was Mr. Aajgaonkar's and it was
proposed in a meeting in Aajgaon in 1997. Mr. Aajgaonkar then asked
Prasad who was then working in the local M.L.A.'s office to get
involved with the project. In 1998 Prasad undertook pottery and
ceramics training. The other two instructors undertook training in
1998 and 2001. Noteworthy is that the instructors were not potters
traditionally but got trained specifically for the sake of the
institute. For the project itself, there was not a large community
involvement and a pressing need in the beginning. Of course there was
no opposition either and one might guess that the community would get
more involved and excited once they saw some successes. What they are
seeing however is that the center is having trouble selling the stuff
that is made there and that the pottery profession is not economically
lucrative. According to the instructors this is the reason the
community does not have much interest and therefore the instructors
too are not very interested in taking this forward.

Second, inability of the project visionaries to be more involved.
Though the project visionaries (like Mr. Aajgaonkar and Mr. Kulkarni)
had good intentions, they were not able to spend enough time at
Aajgaon and take responsibility to take the vision to fruition.
Particularly, I feel there was not enough done to see to it that the
articles that are produced are sold.

Third, poor infrastructure. The gas kiln that is currently there
cannot be used for glazing ceramic articles, which  require high
temperatures and uniform heat. It can be used for firing clay
articles, but that also is too expensive to be economically
competitive. To get an idea of the cost of firing, consider this: Upto
500 kulhads or clay cups can be fired at a time in the kiln and for
each firing, one cylinder of LPG is needed. The cost of one cylinder
(commercial rate) is about Rs. 700. So the cost of firing per cup is
Rs. 1.40. The market price for one kulhad is about 70 paise. Clearly,
the kiln is very inefficient. Just by looking at the design, I felt
there was something wrong. The gas burners are at the top of the kiln.
This does not seem right since hot gas rises upwards. Prasad and his
team feel that given the current kiln, it is impossible to make
profits and make the project economically sustainable.

We then discussed what they would like to do now. I told them of the
two possibilities that Shrikant Mulik and I had discussed before: one
that they continue for six more months and in that time set a goal for
themselves to recover part of the costs of the project by selling
their articles and two that they stop the project and take a lump sum
amount (equivalent to three months salary) which might help till they
find some other job. I also told them that Asha would be open to any
other idea that they might come up with. The three of them had a
discussion amongst themselves (I was not present) and decided that
they did not want to continue the project. Their main point was that
without changing the kiln, it would not be possible ever to make the
project successful and this required a further investment of several
lakh rupees.


Going forward:

Given the present situation, I feel the project should be stopped. I
feel if we request the instructors to continue like present till the
money is exhausted, they might agree, but I don't think that will be
fair to them. They have already spent several years of their lives
with the project and since there is no clear direction, it is not fair
to keep them hanging like this for more time.

I think Shrikant might have initiated the money transfer process from
the LKSS account to the Asha Mumbai account. This money can then be
utilized the way Asha Princeton chooses.

End