At a time when land degradation, climate catastrophes, and shrinking rural livelihoods threaten the future of millions, the recent ILDC Regional Workshop on Land held in Bengaluru brought together voices from the grassroots. The stories shared—from community-led land governance to youth-led livelihood innovation—echoed a growing consensus: reclaiming the commons and restoring dignity in rural work is essential. One such story, from the village of Heggodu in Karnataka, offers powerful insights into how crafts-based collectives can spark rural regeneration, empower women, and revive local economies.
Access to Land is central to livelihoods. Over 85% of the population engaged in agriculture are small and marginal farmers. A large share of households operate on less than 1 hectare of land, making agricultural livelihoods economically unviable. Women farmers, who form a majority of this population, often do not own any land. Over 70% of Scheduled Caste (SC) households in rural Karnataka own less than 0.01 hectares of land, highlighting the structural link between caste and land deprivation. Rural households with little or no land are more likely to see youth migrating to urban areas in search of employment, due to lack of viable land-based livelihoods.
This situation is further exacerbated by the effects of rapid climate change. With unpredictable farming seasons, untimely and insufficient or excess rainfall, floods eroding the soil, agriculture has become an unviable occupation. Unsustainable farming practices including overexploitation and pollution of water sources, usage of chemicals, monoculture crops are causing environmental degradation, adding to the devastation and farmers are in turn affected by resultant catastrophes - it has become a vicious cycle that is hard to break. In many rural areas, young people are abandoning farming and land-based occupations—not only due to economic unviability, but also due to the stigma and alienation attached to traditional livelihoods.
What are the alternatives?
In such circumstances, introducing a secondary source of livelihood to such communities can benefit them. Handlooms and Crafts based village industries can enable diversification of livelihoods. By introducing simple skills such as sewing, spinning, weaving coarse fabric, the under-employed / unskilled farmer can be employed. This can especially be beneficial to the women, as most of them have to take care of their household duties and then work in the fields.
Such an experiment was undertaken in Heggodu, in Shivamogga district of Karnataka, a village situated at the foothills of Western Ghats, where traditionally, agriculture has been the primary occupation of the people. Thirty years ago, a group of 13 women with two sewing machines came together and registered the Charaka Womens' Co-operative Society with the intention of creating alternative forms of employment to the villagers, especially women. The members of Charaka have small land holdings growing arecanut, paddy or sugarcane and also backyard orchards and gardens. During the agricultural season, for a few days, they take a break from the production of fabric and tend to land.
Although Heggodu is not a traditional weaving region, handloom weaving was introduced here by providing training to the women. They could weave plain coarse cotton cloth, that too not at the speed to match that of traditional weavers who were highly skilled in the craft. A new market for such cloth had to be created. This was also the time when Charaka took a leap of faith and introduced natural dyeing. Apart from ensuring their soil and water sources were not polluted by chemical affluents, it created additional income to the local farmers who supplied raw materials used for natural dyeing. Most importantly, it led to the establishment of a niche market for sustainable eco-friendly clothing.
Youth and Traditional Rural-based occupations
In traditional handloom weaving clusters, the youngsters are not willing to continue with the profession due to several reasons, the most important of which is a decline in the dignity in their work. Eligible bachelors from the weaving community struggle to get brides. Since weaving is a caste profession, the social stigma associated with it keeps them away. So the majority of handloom weavers who are still weaving are men well above the age of 60. In Charaka, however, since weaving was introduced as a skill, it was not limited to caste weavers and many women came forward to learn this, a lot of them young - over 1/3rd are under the age of 40, and another third less than the age of 50 and less than a third are above the age group 50. It also enabled enterprising youth to start on their own and become employers, further strengthening the village economy. Several new skills were incorporated into the value addition of cloth such as block printing, embroidery, tailoring garments, home furnishing, accessories to ensure more employment.
The Collective as a solution to protect commons
A collective is the most effective way of ensuring that the commons are preserved. People coming together and forming an organization, a co-operative society is the best model for ecologically sustainable economic growth, where everyone gains but the land and commons are not abused. The collective also facilitates better sharing of traditional knowledge and practices, innovation in sustainable production methods, adoption of appropriate technology in the process, access to credit, working capital and subsidies, all of which would have been very difficult, if not impossible, if done individually. They could also more effectively make use of financial grants, take up infrastructure work and improve the working conditions and wages. Common resources, machinery, lab facilities and other expensive equipment could be shared among the members of the collective. A collective is also essential for propagating culture.
A collective-based approach helps gain local recognition and validation, thereby giving greater control over local resources. It has proven to be more effective than individual attempts at preserving community forests, grazing land, sacred groves, irrigation tanks and such. Charaka has garnered support of local representatives and the surrounding community in rejuvenating a nearby community lake adjacent to their land, thereby ensuring water security of the entire neighbourhood.
Another great advantage of a collective, in addition to preservation of commons, is a better command over the market to demand the right price for their products. Individually, it would result in competition, which an outsider could exploit for personal gains, but collectively, the decisions of pricing would benefit everyone. Profits that were made by the collective are shared among the members. Charaka could develop economic resilience which was demonstrated at the time of covid lockdowns. Where individual entrepreneurs and smaller businesses succumbed, Charaka was able to stride over these difficult times due to their collective strength.
A model for ecologically sustainable economic development
Charaka is just a model. It has demonstrated what a driven set of youth can do to create an alternative livelihood in an agricultural region. It has not been without challenges. What is important is to enable several such initiatives across the country in a decentralized way, utilizing local land and resources and the strength of people. The handmade sector, when scaled, has the potential to alleviate the effects of climate change.
It is only when youth are enabled to come together and are provided a free working environment that such a collective can be possible. The youth should feel pride in their work and feel a sense of ownership; this can be done by giving them greater responsibility and involving them in organization building. It is also important to listen to their voices, to understand what they want and create opportunities where they can fulfil their aspirations while working for the collective's goal. Several organizations are working towards providing basic training for the youth to enable them to take up agricultural activities, crafts as entrepreneurs from their villages utilizing their land and other common resources. Some examples of such impactful work are the Punarchith collective in Chamarajanagar district and the Womens' Weave in Gwalior.
In a time of increasing precarity, these stories serve as both warning and inspiration. Reclaiming the commons is not just about policy—it is about restoring relationships between people, land, and livelihoods. For that, we need more platforms like this workshop, and more support for decentralized, youth-led models that prioritize dignity, sustainability, and shared futures.
This article was first published as a blog in Land Portal. Original article: