Aaj Pottery & Ceramic Art Center

Status Report

Vikas Sawant

February 2003

Aajgaon has a tradition in pottery, but the potters do no practice it any more. Today people use stainless steel utensils and pottery items don’t sell enough to make a living out of it. Many economically backward potters go to brick factories these days along with their whole family. The children of the others doing good, do attend schools but most of them do not continue education beyond 10th to 12th standard, which ultimately leaves them jobless. As they do not have any particular skills or vocation, they are left with minimal options to earn their daily bread. Lok Kalyan Shikshan Santha has been running 2 regular schools in Aajgaon and decided to offer free vocational training in pottery for these students.

With a site visit in March 2001 and few meetings with LKSS, we gathered enough information about LKSS and their work in Aajgaon to consider their proposal. Following this, in November 2001, I had presented a proposal from LKSS to run the Aaj Pottery & Ceramic Art Center to our chapter. Subsequently, the chapter decided to send money to this project.

LKSS received the check for $ 8000 from Asha Princeton on 5th December 2001. Till December 2001, LKSS was running the Center on it’s own. LKSS decided to get quotations from credible suppliers to purchase the equipment, prepare a plan of execution and implement it. They wrote us that every month they would inform us about the progress.

From January 2002 to August 2002, LKSS decided to use Asha money only to pay the instructors (Please refer the expense reports).

By this time, the existing furnace had gone out of order. An expert from Bombay visited Aajgaon to inspect the furnace, made certain suggestions and LKSS proposed to undertake the modifications as suggested. LKSS sent us an email on 21st December 2001, but due to Christmas holidays our chapter did not have any meetings at that time. On 18th January 2002, LKSS send us a reminder that they were considering the modification to the existing furnace on urgent basis and after this modification they may be able to continue the training on the furnace. They reported the cost of modification to be around Rs. 48,730 (~ $1000).

I had brief discussion with Srikant Mulik (former Asha Central NJ volunteer, who now volunteers at Asha Mumbai) and we requested them to go ahead with their plans. We decided to agree with the furnace modification plans because LKSS had clearly mentioned their intentions to use Asha funds in a proper manner. LKSS also decided to execute only the salary item from the Asha fund and watch the performance of the center over a period of one academic year (2002-2003). Mr. Warerkar, our contact person, and Mr. Aajgaonkar personally visited Aajgaon to see the performance. Ever since the Center was established, LKSS formed not only formed a local committee to monitor the work, but they themselves made several visits to Aajgaon too.

About 35 high school students had voluntarily decided to take these vocational training classes. The primary goal of this project is to train these students in modern pottery & ceramic art (pottery glazing) so they have some vocation to earn their daily livelihood when they are out of the school.

After the modification of furnace LKSS had a meeting in Mumbai, which Srikant attended. So far the raw material, electricity, gas etc. was taken care by LKSS. Later on, the state government decided to stop the non-salary grants to all the government grant schools. (In the state of Maharashtra, very few schools are completely owned by the government. Most of the schools get government grants, which comprises of teacher/lab technicians salary and other non-salary costs). This was around July 2002.

The monthly expenditure of raw material, electricity, gas, etc is about Rs. 11000 (~ $229) per month. Srikant mentioned to me the example of a project where Asha funds were taken for granted and suggested LKSS to send us monthly expense & general report. LKSS so far did not feel the immediate need to invest heavily into costly equipment, which it had proposed for. They have been very open-minded in involving us in all the discussions. In the mean time, we were busy getting the necessary documents and registering LKSS with Maharashtra Foundation for further funding.

At that time, since I had decided to visit India, I thought it would be a better idea to make a site visit, check the actual work, bring few items if possible and update the chapter. During my site visit to Aajgaon in September, I observed various small items prepared by the students. The instructors made some big items, especially to help the students understand better and for possible sale. The students are unable to do such big items, as it requires great strength to work on the wheel. I brought some items along with me and displayed it in a chapter meeting giving a brief update.

Although it’s a great idea to make the Center self-sustainable, it’s not easy to produce high quality world-class items and sell them. LKSS had planned to buy electric furnace but it wouldn’t help because Aajgaon does not get continuous electric power. If the power goes off while the pottery items are inside the kiln, all the glazing is lost resulting in excess waste.

During a meeting with all the LKSS members, they expressed their willingness to have an Asha Fellow at the project, as they had read the article on Asha by Harshavardhan from Asha Mumbai. They also mentioned us the deficit of Rs. 400,000 (~$8333) that their schools are facing due to cuts in the government grant.

Last week, Mr. Warerkar took Mr. Nitin Kini from Pottery Section of J. J. School of Art to Aajgaon to check the progress. Doctors have recommended Mr. Aajgaonkar to take bed rest for sometime as he is above 82 and having some health problems.

On average about 25 students get trained in the Center. We hope these students get some quality training on modern pottery and ceramic glazing. In the long run it would help them to be better artists and earn a decent livelihood. Mr. L. R. Aajgaonkar, a native of Aajgaon, has been a famous self-taught ceramic artist. His ceramic items have reached Florida. Since he dreams about building a similar future for these kids, he is actively involved in the guiding the instructors at the Center.