Our factory began production at the end of 1959 and from the beginning the primary impulse was to make the finest paper possible from the best available raw materials. Fortunately, the Khadi and Village Industries Commission, a governmental organization responsible for the development of all village industries in India, had developed a semi-automatic lifting vat at its research center in Pune. With this equipment it is relatively simple for a new worker to learn how to lift paper efficiently within three to four months. Our method of papermaking is essentially Western. We use cotton, a traditional Western fiber, Hollander beaters, Western-style molds, felts, and presses. We also size and calender our papers. We obtain our raw materials from mills which prepare items for hosiery. These 100% cotton rags are first sorted and dusted, using a metal screen over a box. They are then cut into strips two or three inches in length and again dusted. After being boiled with caustic soda, the rags are washed in a mild bleach and are then ready for beating. We have two Hollander-type beaters, one with 150 kg capacity and one handling 100 kg. The beaters have wash drums for removing dirty water and debris. We add small amounts of titanium dioxide, optical bleach, rosin, and alum to the pulp after it is fully beaten. We do not pass our pulp through a refiner or knotter. Our molds have metal or nylon mesh screens and we use wooden vats constructed at the ashram. After sheets are formed, couched, and pressed once, they are inspected for defects. Those which are not returned to the vat are pressed again and then hung up to dry. The papers are then examined, brushed free of dust, gelatine sized, and redried. The sheets are finally sorted, calendered, and trimmed. Our supervisory staff was trained at the Research Center in Pune and we were fortunate enough to get the services of four or five trained men from other units. This small team had to train local workers from scratch and thus, initially, quality control was a big challenge. Now, after more than thirty years, some of our original workers are still with us, playing a valuable role in providing balance and experience to the work force. Generally our male workers are young and from quite poor families. The ambiance of our village-type industry offers them a congenial base for learning the responsibilities of industrial life. Because few people of their level of society ever move far away from their birth place, the factory is a place of considerable social value. The social cohesion of the work force has been found to be important and the basic harmonies of life significant as a production factor. From the beginning we realized that to maintain profitability we had to be able to market our "reject" paper, which we have in substantial amounts because we are making high-grade handmade paper in quantity. Thus we began almost at the very beginning to turn our rejected paper into office files, postcards, or note paper. As our stationery conversion section is now well arranged, we are able here to give employment to several badly handicapped people. Being a part of an internationally known institution has also helped our marketing considerably and in this we have had a distinct advantage over many other handmade paper units in the country. However there is no doubt at all that the steady development of our conversion section has been a leading reason for our success. Our exports of stationery, to North America (since the late 1960s), Europe, Japan, and Australia are now the predominant feature of our work. Our young men and women are learning to marble beautifully, to silk screen print, bind, and prepare many varieties of attractive stationery based on the requirements of our overseas customers. It has been interesting to observe that the children of our workers are able to get a reasonably good education now and are moving towards more modern occupations, working with computers and in other technical areas. As the papermaking tradition will not run in these families we have to attract young men for papermaking and offer better scales of pay to a fresh batch every two or three years, to replace the men who discontinue lifting but do not leave our employment. The usefulness of a well-equipped conversion section attached to any hand papermaking unit was realized not only to use all the reject paper but also as a means of providing a comparatively less strenuous job for the papermakers (lifters) as soon as they pass the age of about forty years. We have found from experience that even with semi-automatic vats our lifters here can do effective work for a maximum of twenty years and therefore have to be given a change of job and absorbed elsewhere in the factory. Now some of our old lifters are binding or making envelopes. We have not deviated from the original methods of making paper and our papers, even the brightly colored varieties, are still made only from white cotton hosiery cuttings; we have not cut costs by mixing in waste papers. Overall we know strongly that the success of our factory in comparison with many hundreds elsewhere has been due to our spiritual guidance and convictions. This has been the foundation of everything we have tried to do.
