Alternative trade: Aiming at fair share of Balinese crafts
Alternative trade: Aiming at fair share of Balinese crafts
By Anna Lucas
DENPASAR (JP): Made Muluh used to be a rice farmer. He learned
to carve wooden statues from his father, who was also a rice
farmer whose skills were called on from time to time to make
wooden icons for shrines and temples in his hometown of
Tegalalang.
In the early '80s, in need of extra cash to meet increasing
community demands for ritual donations, Muluh mortgaged 70 acres
of land to establish a business in the booming handicraft trade.
It was clear to Muluh that it was the flocks of tourists, not
the muddy sawah, that was the answer to his never ending series
of fiscal crises.
But somehow, Made Muluh miscalculated. By the following year,
he found himself unable to pay the bank, and was in greater debt
than he could ever have imagined.
Faced with the prospect of selling his land to developers or
declaring bankruptcy, Muluh breathed a sigh of relief when Mitra
Bali, the island's sole alternative trade organization, stepped
in.
"What we offered to Muluh was simply a soft loan," explains
Mitra Bali founder and frontman, Agung Alit.
"So now, instead of being indebted to the bank, he makes
repayments to Mitra Bali at a much lower rate," Agung said. In
return, Mitra Bali gets use of the land until the loan is paid
off.
"The idea from the beginning was to use the land for some kind
of income generating activity that would benefit the local
community of craftspeople," he continued.
Agung said Mitra Bali initially thought of building some kind
of tourist accommodation.
"But then I realized that this was a great opportunity, and a
much better example to the local community, if we could give
something back supporting the environment," he said.
So they settled on using the land for a regreening project --
"planting fast growing timbers that can be used by woodcarvers".
But not many of Made Muluh's neighbors in the Tegalalang
handicraft district have been as lucky as he was.
At the root of the problem is the drastic and rapid pace of
change.
Guide book
Tourism can transform a community's economy almost overnight.
In Tegalalang, locals looked to be at a loss as to how to tackle
the cash pouring in.
It was between the pages of tourist guide books that this
area, once known as a "rice-bowl," was reconstructed to become
Bali's "handicraft center". Since the early '80s locals have seen
an increasing number of souvenir-seeking tourists.
Not surprisingly, many locals, to whom woodcarving skills had
been passed down from elders as temple art, left the sawah for
the roadside shopfront.
In the rush to be part of the world of commerce, the new
handicraft business people found themselves adopting systems of
economic management that worked for them as rice farmers, but
which were much more difficult to apply to their new endeavors.
Agung Alit became aware of this reality when he was working
with a national level alternative trade organization, Pekerti.
"After two years of doing rounds of wood carver
families..(and)..being involved in their community activities, I
saw a pattern of problems and obstacles emerge," he said.
He could see why the craftspeople were dependent on the
middlemen who did the buying for mega-art shops.
"Not only were they dependent on the art shops for marketing
and promotion, but most had no basic book-keeping system, and
thus nothing to refer to in setting prices."
By 1993 Agung Alit had established Mitra Bali as the first
Bali-based alternative trade organization, whose "main motive is
not profit, but rather to ensure that local producers, artisans
and craftspeople, feel some of the benefits of industry
expansion," he explained.
Kicking off with a healthy fiscal injection from the United
Nations-sponsored People to People project, and British-based aid
organization Oxfam, Mitra Bali set about organizing woodcarver
family units in Tegalalang.
A system of ordering, production, packaging, transporting and
marketing was set up to ensure maximum market accessibility to
the producer.
In addition to its system of fair trade -- which includes an
unprecedented 50 percent deposit on all orders -- Mitra Bali also
initiates programs to tackle the problem at its roots.
Training sessions in subjects such as book-keeping, design,
marketing and promotion, are held regularly.
At the sessions held in Silungan, near Ubud, around 20
craftspeople, all men, were busy transforming their sketches into
small statues in wood.
Competition
Sue Harrison and Retno Winahyu, of Oxfam's Product Development
Division, offer advice and suggestions to the carvers.
"...craftspeople really need to be coming up with new,
original designs to be able to survive," explains Winahyu.
She said Oxfam, the biggest buyer of the crafts, decided such
training was needed for two reasons: so that producers could be
one step ahead of competitors in actively creating new products,
and to give them an idea of marketable designs.
At this session, participants were learning about the finer
marketable points of cat figures, a trend in Britain.
Much of Oxfam's 'fair trade' products -- handicrafts from all
over the Third World, are sold via mail-order catalogs.
Oxfam's criteria for products to achieve fair trade status
are: 'no exploitation of child labor and women, healthy working
conditions, and use of environmentally friendly materials.'
"Consumers in (Britain) are increasingly aware of Fair Trade
issues, and they are willing to pay a bit more for Fair Trade
products," claims Winahyu, adding price and quality remained main
considerations.
Resident Nyoman Mudhita is crouched over a figure of a wooden
cat, into which he cuts a Cheshire grin and eyes as round as a
Barong.
The Foundation places orders with him to supply buyers --
mostly alternative trade organizations themselves -- in Canada,
Japan, the United States and the UK.
A woodcarver all his life, like his father, Mudhita only
recently opened a shop front in Tegalalang. His first order from
Mitra Bali, he said, was his most successful to date.
The reasons, he said, were: "First, Mitra Bali places 50
percent deposit on all orders. No other buyers I know of do this,
so craftspeople are usually forced into a situation where they
have to borrow money to finance the order."
"Second, Mitra Bali guarantees not to leak original designs to
other craftspeople who might be able to produce them at a cheaper
price."
He said one of the biggest challenges craftspeople face is
that of design stealing -- often by art shops.
While copyright laws do exist in Indonesia to protect original
designs, taking such claims to the courts is beyond the means of
most woodcarvers.
But is a single foundation capable of ensuring that local
artisans get a fair go? One reason to be hesitant about embracing
alternative trade as 'the answer' is the ominously impending free
trade agenda of recently formed multilateral bodies such as the
Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.
Industrialized
Agung Alit says they were already feeling the impact of
competition from Bangladesh, Nepal and India, "where woodcarvings
can be produced much cheaper than in Bali".
Moreover, he says what is now a mainly home-based, family unit
industry could end up being completely industrialized to up
production and cut labor costs.
This could mean the forcing of artisans from their backyard
rural workshops into huge handicraft assembly lines in Jakarta's
urban sprawl.
But due to a gubernatorial decree by which their Bali branches
are required to buy locally, Balinese artisans say they are yet
to feel the impact of this nascent industrialization process.