Highland to High Fashion: The Development of a Women Cooperative in Ladakh

Pashmina or cashmere is one of the most expensive natural fabrics in the world, and yet the lives of those who produce this rare fibre are the toughest ones. This article seeks to analyse the various stages in the creation and development of the Looms of Ladakh Women Cooperative under Project Laktsal of the district administration Leh. It is an initiative to empower rural Ladakhi women by endowing them with skills necessary to add value to raw pashmina and woollen fibres to turn them into the high-end products perennially in demand. Sharing the lessons learnt in bringing together 150 uneducated, unemployed women from different and distant villages and in training and uniting them by the creation of a cooperative society is the endeavour of the article. It analyses various steps involved in building forward and backward linkages for the organisation and imparting the women with such diverse skills as knitting, weaving, production planning, marketing and financial management. The article also tries to put the effort in the right perspective, giving an idea of the extremely tough conditions faced on a daily basis by the women of rural Ladakh