A village with splashing colours

As far as the eye can see it is lusty colours splashing everywhere. Villagers are putting meticulously crafted batik fabrics out to dry.

The artistry of designing grey cloths with various colours has given the once needy people with no work in Banti village, a bastion of batik, a new lease of life.  

The intrinsic batik art depicts colours of joy and happiness, but does it tell how the life of artisans actually is? What does it take to make batiks? The amount of dedication, hard work behind the scenes of their artistic work is often unheard of. 

At the break of day, hundreds of men and women in Banti village on the Dhaka-Sylhet Highway in Narayanganj's Araihazar upazila start their work, which even lasts up to 14 hours a day. Fabrics they print various patterns on are purchased from nearby mills.

Batik artisans then dye, print, wash, dry, fold and package the finished products and market those - an arduous job. Their work becomes even harder ahead of festivals such as Eid-ul-Fitr and Pahela Baishakh.

These people mainly produce shalwar-kameez for women, bed sheets and pillow covers. The prices range between Tk220 and Tk800.

Banti village is famous for batiks and the people have been in this business for generations. Around 15,000 artisans are engaged in batik production in some 400 factories at the biggest production hub of batik fabrics.

Most people in the village have switched to batik business as it does not require much investment. People in other nearby villages are also taking up this profession.

These batiks find their way mainly to Gausia in Narayanganj and Baburhaat in Narsingdi. Several markets have sprung up in Banti village too.

The life and livelihood of around 90% of people in the dyeing village depend on the batik business.

But the Covid-19 pandemic has turned the lives of these people upside down with their earnings going down drastically.

Nur Alam, a teenage artisan at Banti – who along with his father and elder brother is engaged in batik art, told The Business Standard, "Our monthly earnings have dropped to Tk10,000-Tk12,000 from Tk70,000 in pre-Covid times.

"The demand for batik fabrics has seen some increase recently, but we cannot produce much owing to a crisis of Chinese grey fabrics we mostly depend on."

The family is still finding it very hard to make ends meet, Nur Alam said.

Mohammad Jahangir, a batik businessman, said, "Our sales have so far made only a 50% recovery although shopping malls and brand shops reopened after the shutdown."

"We are now facing a crisis of fabrics we use to produce batiks," he added.

However, Roni Mollah, another businessman, said his sales have recovered to a satisfactory level.