TULASIGERI, India, July 9, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – When top Indian officials
salute the national flag anywhere in the world, women in a village at the
other end of the country from New Delhi swell with pride.
This is because Tulasigeri is home to India’s only official flag-making
company — and because the local men have proved themselves not up to the
job.
“The men were not as patient as the women and got the measurements wrong,”
groans Annapurna Koti, a supervisor at the Karnataka Cotton Village
Enterprise (KKGSS).
“They had to unstitch the cloth and re-do the time consuming process,” she
told AFP. “They left after the fourth day and never returned.”
Around 400 people work for the state-owned company in the southern state of
Karnataka, 2,000 kilometres (1,200 miles) from the capital, most of them
women.
The production takes place at two sites: in Tulasigeri where the raw
products are processed and in Bengeri around two hours away where the
finished products are made.
The female employees perform all the intricate parts of the process such as
spinning the cotton and weaving the thread into cloth on foot-powered looms.
Last year, they produced around 60,000 Indian tricolours of saffron, white
and green against a blue wheel.
Their flags hang at all official events and government buildings, at Indian
embassies across the world, as well as at schools, village halls and on
official cars.
The guidelines in the national flag code of India and from the Bureau of
Indian Standards are strict, covering everything from the exact shades to the
stitching size.
“The piece is rejected if there is even the slightest error,” Nirmala S
Ilakal, who has worked in the printing department for 15 years, told AFP.
Most workers, especially the women — who also manage their households —
have rarely travelled outside their local districts.
But Koti, the supervisor, says that knowing that their handiwork goes far
and wide goes some way to compensating for this.
“We can’t go outside to different places but the flags we make go all over
the world and I feel proud to see everyone saluting them,” she said.