Twenty women learning to weave in Udhampur, which isn't a small thing
By Shweta Sonali — 2026-10-21
Twenty women showed up to learn carpet weaving in Christian Colony, Udhampur. They're getting stipends every month while they train, and when they finish, they'll walk out with a diploma.
That's the frame of what's happening there, at least on paper. The Handicrafts Department set up this training centre with one fairly straightforward goal: preserve traditional weaving skills while giving women actual employment options. No mystique needed.
The money side is simple enough. During training, stipends come through. Complete the course, get the diploma. Then—and this is where it opens—if you want to start your own business, the department doesn't just shake your hand. They provide financial support. Loans, sponsorship, the paperwork sorted.
Sonam, the Assistant Handicraft Training Officer in Udhampur, put it plainly when she spoke to journalists: "We used to practice it there in the winter, but it slowly got a bit cold." The work moves with seasons, with weather, with how much space a family has to dedicate to a loom. So the department tries to keep things steady—teaching, practicing, promoting, wherever the centre operates. Carpet weaving, mat making. The work is repetitive and it's learned by doing.
The skills aren't new inventions. But they're not automatic either. You need someone patient enough to teach them, and you need space to practice without worrying about money disappearing while you learn.
What's interesting—and possibly overlooked—is that this training centre sits within a much larger ecosystem. Across Jammu and Kashmir, women's Self-Help Groups formed under the Rural Livelihood Mission are doing something similar but broader. They're turning home skills into income streams. Weaving, food processing, tailoring, agriculture work, small retail. The women save collectively, borrow from each other, get trained. Then they sell their work at markets, exhibitions, fairs. They move it beyond their villages.
For many women in these groups, the money side has shifted. A skill they always knew—something taught at home, passed down without documentation—became a regular income. More than that, it gave them actual say in household financial decisions. That's not sentimental. That's structural.
The Udhampur centre sits in that same logic. Train women, give them stipends so they're not broke while learning, award credentials, support the ones who want to start businesses. It's not glamorous. It's methodical.
Whether twenty becomes two hundred or stays twenty depends on whether the looms keep running, whether the stipends keep arriving, whether anyone actually wants to buy what gets made. Training doesn't solve market access. But it does solve the threshold problem: you can't start anything if you're spending your daylight hours just keeping even.
That's what's different about spaces like this, honestly.