Khandekar - COAL TO GOLD

THOUGH IT HAS BEEN 4045 years, Savitaben still hasnt forgotten the days when her husband used to work as a conductor for the Municipal Transport Service in Ahmedabad and earned a meagre salary of Rs 60 a month. It was difficult to sustain a family of six childrenthree sons and three daughtersas well as her in-laws on such a small amount. Out of those Rs 60, Rs 15 was given to her in-laws; Rs 20 went towards repaying the loan her husband had taken for the weddings of his younger brothers; and Rs 5 was used towards the rent of the tiny 100-square-feet room the family lived inleaving Savitaben with only Rs 20 to run her house.

Ultimately, she decided that she would have to work too. But what could she have done without educational qualifications, for she had studied only up to class three. Her parents sold coal on a small scale. Savitaben had said to her mother: Why dont you give me some coal too? I will sell it and earn something. Her mother had replied: Take money from us if you want, but we cannot give you coal. If we do, then we wont be able to marry your sisters off.

On hearing this, Savitaben had taken neither money nor coal from her parents. If she had taken money from them that day, Savitaben Devjibhai Parmar wouldnt have come to be known as Savitaben Kolsawallah or Koylawallah to the whole of Gujarat.

Those days, Ahmedabad was known for its cloth mills, and the half-burnt coal which was the residue from these mills was sold off in the market. Savitaben began buying coal from these mills and recounts how she first sold itloaded on two carts, in the lanes of Ahmedabadand how she soon graduated to selling four cartloads of coal. In those days, the use of liquefied petroleum gas was not widespread, and in most homes, cooking was done on stoves fuelled by coal. Before setting off to supply coal for peoples kitchens, Savitaben would get up at 4 a.m. to prepare her husbands lunch, after which she would set off for the mill and sell coal during the day. Come evening, the whole family would get involved in spinning cotton yarn till midnightthey had got a spinning wheel from Khadi Gram Udyog, and received wages for the yarn in cash and in kind.

Today, Savitaben sells neither coal nor spun yarn. Her company, Sterling Ceramic Private Limited, situated near Ahmedabad, manufactures floor tiles for homes. On a factory visit, I noted how things at the plant, which manufactures 5000 square metres of Spartek tiles every day, were in full swing. A new plant is expected to begin production soon, and the companys turnover is expected to increase from Rs 15 to Rs 50 crore the following year.

Savitaben had to face additional discrimination on account of her being not only a Dalit but also a woman. However, she was lucky to have a good support system. In the beginning, it was difficult for her to even deposit the spun yarn at Khadi Gram Udyog in the evenings, as she had trouble stepping out of the house. It was her father-in-law who encouraged her to go ahead and do this work. She also had a lot of difficulty selling coal, and it was only after five or six years that she expanded her trade. At first, she began selling the half-burnt coal from the mills to owners of brick kilns; then she stopped dealing in half-burnt coal and began dealing in normal coal. Those were the days of the Licence Rajtraders would procure licences to obtain coal and outsource the selling of coal to agents.

Seeing Savitabens enterprise in dealing with the coal from the mills, a Jain trader outsourced his work to her. She remembers him fondly as Kaka, and says he transformed her life. His coal was obtained under the quota system and it arrived on two freight cars each month. But when Savitaben requested other traders to outsource their work to her, they refused on the grounds that she was a Dalit womanwhat would they do if she ran away with their coal one day? So Kaka became her guarantor, and Savitaben began selling most of the coal that arrived in Ahmedabads railway yard, as a commission agent.

With her business growing by leaps and bounds, Savitaben began to face a problem: her family still lived in a one-room tenement in a chawl in Girja Nagar, and she did not have an office to operate from. Savitabens eldest son, Mukesh, relates how they brokered a deal with the owner of a hotel near their chawlNeelam Hotelwhereby traders who wanted to buy coal could wait at the hotel and the owner would send someone to fetch Savitaben or her son. Savitabens three sons are not well educated, but they have been helping their mother from the very beginning.

A doctor, whose name Savitaben doesnt remember any more, used to eat at the same hotel every day and would observe how Savitaben conducted her business. He hailed from a small principality near Vadodara in Gujarat, and was so impressed that he offered Savitaben his house in the Meghani Nagar locality in Ahmedabad, saying that he had to, in any case, return to his native place on completing his education. In 1977, the cost of the house was Rs 45,000, but Savitaben was able to arrange only Rs 15,000the doctor said she could pay him the rest later.