The housewife, who had managed to study only till the ninth grade owing to her being married off at the age of 13, had only her knitting and sewing skills to turn to for supplementing the family income. [break]
Without her family´s knowledge at first, Sapkota started a small sewing and knitting enterprise in her own house, employing herself between attending to household chores.
In the afternoons, after her husband left for office and children went to school, she made rounds of shops in Kathmandu requesting shopkeepers to sell her sweaters and baby suits. Soon, she pleasantly surprised herself by earning four times what her husband made as an employee at National Trading.
What began as a self-employment initiative 35 years ago has today evolved into a cottage industry that specializes in producing mattresses, quilts, pillows, diapers, towels, and shoes for newborn infants, apart from clothes for breast-feeding mothers.
The 72-year-old has imparted self-employment skills to over 10,000 women in the past 35 years. Many now own houses in Kathmandu, while others are running independent businesses.
In the past three decades, Sapkota´s Nepal Grihini Udyog (NGU) in Ghattekulo has imparted knitting, sewing and marketing skills to over 10,000 mostly illiterate women coming from lower middle class families. The firm today has developed appendages in the forms of Bhotu-Indira Social Welfare Organization, and the Aad Multipurpose Cooperative.
The NGU has grown into a complete stop for parents looking for infant wear and clothes for new moms, including those who have undergone a Caesarian. The products have evolved over decades of customers´ suggestions and specialized needs.
Sapkota´s network of social initiatives also runs the Gram Sudhar Lower Secondary School at Baluwa VDC, Gokarna, where 150 poor Nagarkoti children study for free.
Fighting social stereotype
“With thousands of women self-employed these days, it might not sound like a big deal anymore,” said Sapkota seated in her office at Ghattekulo. From the narrow office that has an old set of sofa, a desktop, and a cupboard full of files chronicling records of over three decades can be heard the regular, monotonous noise of sewing machines operated by half-a-dozen skilled women in a neighboring hall. “Times were different then,” she added.
Despite the obvious contribution of her initiative to household finances, her efforts were met with disapproval by her own family members, including her three sons. Her in-laws were furious when they heard that their daughter-in-law had gone out of her way and was doing “business”, something that only males were supposed to do.
“The society shunned me. People could not understand why I was not content with my husband´s earnings,” she said.
Fortunately, in orphans and lower middle class housewives, Sapkota found the ammunition to fight the society and meet a rising demand for her products. Since the very beginning, Sapkota has employed only women.
Her products became so popular that at one point she was running a stall outside the Maternity Hospital in Thapathali selling her products sewed and woven together by over 200 women. Today, her products, that bear the brand name AAD (meaning support) are found in many shopping centers in the country.
“Business is rising,” says the grandmother, who lives alone in a small house left for her by her husband.
Cost of independence
Sapkota´s husband passed away in 1986. She would have liked to have her children around in her old age. But then, she had to make a hard choice between managing NGU and spending time idly at home. Her sons wanted her to choose the latter, as they saw her active involvement with NGU as a message to the society that she was not being taken care of financially by them.
"I refused to give up working for the Udyog and that estranged me from my sons," she added. "They want me to stop associating myself with something that is dearest to me. Why should I stop using my skills?"
Deserted by her children and seeing many elderly facing similar fate, Sapkota today actively participates in the National Senior Citizens´ Network to ensure rights for senior citizens in the new constitution.
"The provision of dividing property equally among claimants leaves the neediest members of a family without a stable source of income," Sapkota said. "Children want parents to part with parental property as soon as they grow up. This is problematic."
Sapkota, who was born on December 10, 1938, to a family in Mahabauddha, no longer needs to work for herself and wouldn´t mind retiring.
But before she calls it a quit with NGU, she needs to make sure that she has a capable successor and a solid foundation to carry on.
Sapkota currently pays Rs 23,000 per month in rent to two facilities that she has been using to run the NGU and the cooperative, apart from tens of thousands to her employees.
"A final task remains. I need to find a piece of land to set up the Udyog and hand it over to these ladies," she said, pointing at her employees. "After me, the initiative is theirs."
bikash@myrepublica.com
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