Upasana: starting the fourth seven-year cycle

As far as birthdays go, Upasana’s 20th, celebrated on December 9th was a quiet affair with excess stock made available against ‘suggested contributions’ and all income donated to the future Line of Goodwill, a 200+ crore development initiative in which Upasana’s executive Uma is particularly interested. “It will bring a sea-change in Auroville,” she predicts.

Seven year cycles

We are seated in a quiet area of the Upasana compound, contemplating an immense rock in a Japanese sand garden. “Upasana’s evolution,” says Uma reflectively, “goes in seven-year cycles.” During the first, Upasana was quite successfully doing normal business. The second cycle started when the tsunami hit and Upasana got involved in social responsibility work, starting many not-for-profit activities. These were intense years with some projects becoming national icons, such as the Tsunamika doll and ‘Small Steps’, the foldable cotton bags to replace plastic shopping bags. The projects kicked off the “Gift Economy”, in which the products were given away free but the recipients were asked to make a donation in return. Farther afield, Upasana got involved with the Varanasi weavers, initiating the revival of a dying art; and with organic cotton production around Madurai, trying to prevent farmer suicides.

“During the third cycle we saw Varanasi once again hitting the limelight as the decline of Varanasi’s weaving technology had been reversed,” says Uma. “We are proud to have been amongst those who helped bring this turnabout.” The movie on Upasana’s work with the Varanasi weavers, made by Basil and Claudine, was shown to the Prime Minister during his visit to Varanasi in September this year. “That was a great honour. Upasana’s work was brought to national awareness.” Uma herself was made a member of the All India Handloom Board, a national advisory board of the Ministry of Textiles, to help develop a policy for handloom textiles in India.

The work with the cotton farmers led to the introduction of Upasana’s organic cotton line. “When I was interacting with the farmers I felt their desperation, and being in the fashion business I had a hard time pushing away a feeling of guilt, of being responsible for the farmers’ suicides. Not doing anything was not an option for me. We were not in a position to question the fact that now 97 % of all Indian cotton is genetically modified. But Bt cotton was introduced promising better yields and a better income for the farmers. For many small farmers this did not manifest as the costs of Bt seeds, chemical fertilizers and insecticides exceeded the income from sales. The farmers took loans to cover pre-harvesting costs, and when crops failed, committed suicide. Promoting organic cotton was our way to help the small cotton farmers.

Downside

Doing so much social experimenting had a negative fallout: Upasana struggled to survive. “To launch Upasana’s organic cotton brand, we had scraped together 60 lakhs from all over Upasana – money from credit lines, deferred payments – and it worked. We were listed in the top five social companies of India, we got a lot of positive publicity, but the negative side of it was that for many years we not only had to stop all our contributions to Auroville, but were struggling to survive as a company. Looking back, I say we had been naive, very idealistic and we got quite a few blows – from within Auroville, but also from ourselves. We do not regret what we did outside, but we did feel bad that Auroville got affected because of it – even though we felt that we were guided, carried by a spiritual aspiration which was our justification for this drive.”

People had come to see Upasana as an idealistic NGO, not as a company. “Because of the ‘Gift Economy’ concept we’d introduced, people started believing that all that Upasana made was for free, even clothing. But the Gift Economy hadn’t worked as well as we had hoped. We’d given away over 5 million Tsunamika’s to 80 different countries, and a lesser number of Small Steps bags, but the ‘return giving’ was insufficient. ‘Return giving’ happens when a person feels committed to the cause of the ‘gift’, or just as an expression of gratitude. That needs a lot of hand holding – people are to be reminded of the purpose of the gift – and we couldn’t do that,” says Uma. To remind people of the Gift Economy ideal, Uma now organizes Gift Economy sessions where Upasana’s clothes carry a suggestion concerning what amount people could contribute.

So much of the third seven-year cycle focused on undoing the negative ‘NGO’ image and recovering financial health. “That took us three years,” says Uma. Upasana’s focus shifted to becoming a social and sustainable business, but no longer donor-based. “Now we have been able to re-establish Upasana as a premier design company in the Indian and international markets,” she says.

Making fashion accountable

Yet, the social responsibility work did leave its marks. “I dare say that we have played a large part in waking up many organisations to start working with organic, so much so that today organic has become fashionable. And now we have started another move: we’ve launched a conscious fashion hub as a national platform to address all the difficult questions that the fashion industry has to answer. We want to make fashion accountable and talk about issues such as pollution caused by fashion – fashion is the second largest pollution industry of the planet – and labour conditions.” Uma mentions the 2013 disaster of Rana Plaza in Bangladesh, where a badly constructed building that housed five garment factories supplying global brands collapsed, killing 1,135 people. “This still happens all the time all over Asia,” she says.

This year Upasana hosted a two-day workshop in Auroville, attended by 75 people who flew in from all over India. “Policy makers, deans of organisations and founding members of the organic movement came to listen to their peers about ‘consciously dealing with fashion’. For them, Auroville is a place where much conscious effort is put into making society a better place, and they wanted to connect.” She feels it is also in response to a world-wide shift of consciousness. “Upasana is helping bring that shift about, but the true credit goes to Auroville and to what stands behind Auroville.”

The fourth cycle: going bonsai?

Upasana today employs around 50 people, a varying number of interns, and a number of people working in different villages on Tsunamikas and Small Steps. Business is brisk, yet Uma is not happy.

“I am worried about the future,” she says. “Upasana is re-establishing itself as a premier fashion brand, and we are opening up again to international markets – not as a cheap job service provider but as a unit that sells its own brand designs. I am just back from Japan and Singapore, and earlier I was in Europe, as an ambassador of Auroville conscious fashion. Japan, in particular, is sensitive to that approach. In September this year we were at the India Trend Fair in Tokyo, and our stand was among the most visited. I have as a market strategy chosen to only take small orders. For Japan, that works.”

But that approach won’t help Upasana to grow. “We need a system shift, otherwise Upasana will ‘go bonsai’ – unable to grow as its roots can’t expand. We need investment to grow, and that seems not to be available in Auroville. So we need well-wishers' help to develop. Upasana needs two crore [approximately US $ 320,000, eds.] as ‘angel investment’, but without expecting any other return than supporting Auroville through a unit with whose profits Auroville will faster develop.”

Upasana is not alone. Auroville’s fast growing units together would need something like 20 crores of this type of investment. The problem is largely due to the unique legal structure and the income tax exempt status of the Auroville Foundation which makes investment in the units by outsiders impossible. “I hope that Auroville’s Funds and Assets Management Committee will come up with a solution soon,” says Uma. “My chartered accountant once asked me why I didn’t come out of Auroville and play mainstream ... but is that the future of Auroville business?”

Uma confides that when she starts thinking large, she get butterflies in her belly. “Nevertheless,” she says, “I am ready to go ahead, no longer solo, but on a large-scale together with the community. For I often feel something or rather somebody is pushing us with a quiet but very intense force. I just have to learn to surrender.”