Biscuits, towels, shirts, wooden artefacts, lanterns, bags, Kolhapuri chappals and yoga mats were among the dozens of articles, made by inmates of eight State prisons, on sale at an exhibition held at the Mantralaya. The three-day event, which concluded on Saturday, also featured LED lights made by Amravati prison inmates — a first for the annual exhibition.
“Our USP is great quality at cheap prices, since they are being sold on a no-profit, no-loss basis,” says S.V. Ranadive, a machine instructor at Yerwada Central Prison.
Shirts, the cloth for which is woven by the textile division and stitched by the tailoring section of prisons, are available for Rs. 260 to Rs. 300. These articles are also available at sale counters set up at various prisons, besides being sold at exhibitions, fairs and festivals.
Visitor Nutan Kshirsagar said, “Normally, this exhibition is held at Yerwada Central Prison, but this time it was held at Mantralaya and I came glad I came to check this out. I liked the wooden handicraft that I picked up. One hopes they hold the exhibition at a central location and on a regular basis.” +
Chartered Accountant Nitin Gokhale, a regular at this exhibition, said: “We had purchased a handloom dari (bedsheet) about 40 years ago from the Nagpur prison, and it’s still going strong.” S.N. Dhende, a tailoring instructor at Yerwada Central Prison, added, “The handloom daris are a huge hit because of their quality. These days, you don’t get such daris in the market as no one apart from our prisoners make handloom daris anymore. If maintained well, they could last up to two hundred years.”
Mr. Randive agrees, adding, “We have developed huge dough-kneading machines, which are now being supplied to other prisons like Tihar and ones in Karnataka. We have patented the machines developed by us.”
Instructors say convicts are happy to learn new skills as it gives them an opportunity to earn and send money to their families. Prisoners are paid based on their qualifications: an unskilled prisoner gets Rs. 40 per day, a semi-skilled one, Rs. 50 while a skilled prisoner gets Rs. 55. “A prisoner generally takes about six months to acquire skills for a specific task, and gets his wages at the end of the month from the prison, much like a working professional,” says Mr. Randive.
The State Prisons Department, now known as the Department of Correctional Services, is also working on providing services like assembling of automobile electrical cables for private companies under a private-public partnership (PPP) scheme.
The writer is a freelance journalist
