Arifa Jan (33), who was awarded Nari Shakti Puraskar for 2019, has established three manufacturing units to revive a Kashmiri traditional rug called ‘Namda’ besides employing 25 craft people and training 100 women in the Valley.
Arifa, a post-graduate from the Craft Development Institute, Srinagar, worked for a Namda revival project after completing her degree. She started her first business unit in old city’s Sekidafar locality in Srinagar in 2012. Namda is a felted rug used widely in furnishing, especially during winters.
In less than a decade Arifa has trained more than 100 women in Kashmir and employed 25 Kashmiri craft people besides increasing their wages from Rs 175 to Rs 450. In addition to reviving the traditional craft, Arifa has mostly engaged women and paid good wages to her artisans when the business was thriving.
She was conferred for her outstanding achievement in the revival of felting craft of Kashmir by a leading business house in Kashmir in 2013, Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016, and S-E-A Award in an event organised by a cold drinks company and Jagrati Yatra at Mumbai in 2018.
After returning from a women entrepreneurship programme by the United States State Department under which she was awarded US citizenship eligibility certificate in 2014, she established two other units in Srinagar’s Noorbagh and Nawa Kadal localities.
Arifa was awarded along with 15 other women by President Ram Nath Kovind on International Women’s Day on Sunday. She is the third woman achiever after Chennai-based social worker Sneha Mohandoss and bomb-blast survivor Malvika Iyer among the seven who will tweet -- minutes after receiving the Nari Shakti Puraskar for 2019 -- from Modi's Twitter handle.
Modi had announced on March 3 to give his social media platforms to women to handle on March 8. “This gesture by PM@narendramodi has boosted my morale and it'll help me to work harder for the betterment of the craft as well as the artisans all over Kashmir,” she tweeted.
“I feel it is important for more women to focus on becoming self-reliant and help other women. My first business activity was participating in an exhibition of handmade items in New Delhi. This exhibit attracted a good clientele and a turnover.”