The silver hands of Hupari

On an afternoon just about a month before Deepavali, Kanchan Katkar, 76, deftly picks up silver ghungroos with a pair of iron tongs that fit into her palm. She attaches them to chain loops. “I have been doing this for decades and will continue to do this as long as I am able,” she says, her voice bearing a gentle tremor. Deep inside her dimly lit house, hidden within the twisting lanes of Hupari town, where rooms line up like wagons on a track, Katkar sits in the shadows.

Back in 1970, Kanchan was one of the few girls who completed school in Hupari. Marriage then was taken for granted, but after her two sisters wed, she decided to stay single to care for her parents, who had actively participated in the Indian freedom struggle.

Her decision sent shockwaves through her family and village, breaking an unwritten social code. “Why should only a son bear the responsibility of caring for ageing parents?” she says. “Why can’t daughters?” Had she ever agreed to marry, it would have been on one non-negotiable condition: that her parents remain her primary care and priority. Eventually, her parents accepted her choice.

“I learnt sewing and soon entered the silver industry,” Kanchan remembers. “For any woman seeking autonomy and control over her own life and resources, the very first step is economic self-reliance. Hupari’s silver trade gave me and many others that foundation.”

Decades later, Kanchan is neither a factory owner nor a trader. Like thousands of women in her town, she works from home, fitting delicate craftsmanship into the quiet spaces between her daily domestic chores.

In the bustling lanes of Hupari, a town in Kolhapur district celebrated for over a century as Maharashtra’s Silver Capital, the soft clinking of delicate ornaments carries a quiet story of women’s liberation and financial independence.

Here, in an industry generating an annual turnover of ₹1,000 crore, women comprise 60-70% of the town’s 25,000-strong artisan workforce, say records of the Chandi Karkhandar Association (Silver Manufacturers Association), whose members comprise 4,000 or so silver-business owners. A publication brought out by the association says the industry began here in 1904.

Silent labour

While men traditionally handle heavy, factory-bound tasks like melting silver, rolling strips, and soldering broad frames, the heart of Hupari’s silver industry beats inside the homes of the women. Across the town’s winding alleys, populated by about 40,000 people, a domestic production model thrives on women’s quiet labour, fuelling the local economy, with a national supply chain and exports around the globe.

The town is India’s prominent producer of seamless ghungroos, the tiny tinkling beads that define traditional payals (anklets).

Artisans shape and seal these hollow silver spheres by hand. But they also produce several other pieces of jewellery, including anklets, toe rings, and waistbands.

The production cycle begins with molten metal in factory crucibles operated by men. Women use different techniques to finish the ornaments. Using jaali (filigree) techniques, they twist, bend, and mould fine silver wires into complex geometric and Nature-inspired motifs. Their fingers coil thin wire into individual rings, assemble foundational chains, thread beads, link loops, and align delicate charms. They also use meenakari (enamelling) to inject colour into grooved motifs. In this way, they turn industrial output into a living cultural legacy.

Despite hours of painstaking labour, many earn between just ₹200 and ₹250 a day, largely because there are no organised labour unions to demand higher wages or fair returns for their work. The piece rate remains meagre: for 2,000 ghungroos, an artisan gets ₹400. While a few women manage to complete 2,000 beads in a single day, many make far less, underscoring the gap between their vital craft contribution and their financial compensation.

Those at the helm of the industry acknowledge this reality. Dinkar Sase, vice-president of the Chandi Karkhandar Association, admits that, “Ha udyog mahilanchya jivavar chalala ahe (This entire industry rests on the shoulders of women).” Founded in 1944, the association kept its doors firmly closed to women for seven decades, opening membership to female manufacturers only in 2014. Even today, though women run manufacturing units, their husbands often step forward as the public faces of membership.

“Now, the picture is slowly changing and more women are becoming members,” says Dinkar. The irony is embedded in the trade’s identity: the association’s annual report likens Hupari to a saubhagyarupi nari, a woman who embodies grace, marital bliss, and auspiciousness, under the spiritual gaze of the village deity, Goddess Ambabai.

According to Dinkar, female artisans require no formal training because the craft flows naturally through generations of hands. Yet, leadership stays entrenched in male hands.

Almost 8,000 manufacturing operations are male-dominated at the commercial front, with men travelling to trade ornaments across Indian cities, while women manage the daily operations back home.

Since its inception, the association has relied on unanimous decisions led entirely by male presidents. Dinkar maintains that wages are settled collaboratively without dispute, and that the association resolves any grievances without distinction between owners and workers. He says the industry’s latest challenge is meeting Gen Z’s growing demand for fresh, trend-forward silver ornament designs.

A new direction

Sharwari Waingade, now in her 40s, is actively tackling a shift in a century-old craft. Designing contemporary silver pieces, including oxidised-silver lines, says, “The industry will have to adapt to new challenges.” She highlightes both the changing aesthetic demands and the need to mechanise parts of production with modern technical knowledge.

Her entry into the craft was unexpected. While pursuing an MSc in Microbiology in Pune, she met Rajesh. Rajesh came from a family deeply rooted in Hupari’s traditional silver manufacturing. After they married, Sharwari developed a keen interest in carrying that legacy forward.

Inside a traditional stone-structured house attached to their manufacturing unit, she brings out from the cupboard her latest oxidised creations. “This new format of jewellery was introduced by her,” says Rajesh, proudly. He also shows off the antique dies preserved by his family over generations. “We continue to design new pieces based on these traditional dies, and we have a strong B2B clientele for this collection.”

As Sharwari brings in coffee, she reflects on her transition into the family trade: “I wasn’t aware of this industry initially, but now I’m fully immersed in it and working on new marketing strategies, including expanding our presence on social media.”

The industry’s impact extends far beyond individual workshops. Rajesh’s mother, 64-year-old Ambutai, says silver unit work is woven into the social fabric of the region.

“Any woman in Hupari and the surrounding five or six villages gets work by default,” Ambutai says. “It is never the case that there is no work for women’s hands here.”

Ambutai and other local women run self-help groups to save and manage their earnings independently. Having worked shoulder-to-shoulder with her husband throughout her life, she now works alongside her children. She speaks proudly of Rajesh, who has taken on a leadership role within the industry association.

Silver sparks

Navita (name changed to protect privacy) married into a small ornament-manufacturing family in Hupari 15 years ago. Her father — a mill worker in the neighbouring town of Nippani in Karnataka — had insisted she accept the proposal from what he saw as a prosperous merchant family. She had just finished Class 10, and says she was forced into the marriage.

“But then I accepted the reality of life, and decided to navigate it. I learnt the craft, trade secrets, and also began managing a workforce of five people,” Navita says, with a broad smile. “I’m sure that we will grow our business.”

Her husband shares the ambition to expand into new markets, though opinions differ on the path forward. When Navita suggests bringing in artisans from Agra to introduce fresh designs and cross-regional techniques, her husband dismisses the idea with a laugh: “I know what needs to be done.”

When she opens up about her childhood ambition to pursue an education and how she was married off below the legal age, her husband’s eyes widen in alarm. Speaking about these matters to a journalist, he warns anxiously, could land him in jail.

As her husband steps away to negotiate with a trader sourcing small silver idols of Lakshmi for the upcoming Deepavali season, Navita speaks candidly about her broader mission: helping the next generation of women in the craft.

“I had three college girls who came to me to learn the craft,” she recalls. “I trained them, and they worked with me for three years. During that period, I insisted they save their earnings. I told them, ‘Once you save enough money, you have the power to reject unwanted marriage proposals and choose the partner you want.’”

The advice took root. All three women eventually made their own choices in marriage. Today, with Navita’s guidance, they are trying to set up their own manufacturing units in the villages where they now live.

For Navita, breaking the gender gap in Hupari’s silver industry remains the ultimate goal. “Generally, male artisans work in the field for a few years and then transition into manufacturers or traders, but women remain workers forever,” she says. “This has to change.”

Her husband, however, argues that the core of the business requires toughness, which women don’t have.

Jayshree Lohar, 51, firmly rejects the idea that women cannot navigate the realities of business. The only thing she feels that needs to be strengthened are women’s wings. Lohar and her husband, Prakash, 57, run their own manufacturing unit. Unlike many traditional business families, they chose not to force their children into the legacy trade, encouraging them to pursue higher education instead. Their son completed a postgraduate degree in computer science in the United States and works there, while their daughter earned an engineering degree and works at an IT firm in Pune.

Prakash credits Jayshree for the family’s success and their children’s independence.

“All these years, she handled almost 50-60% of the work and responsibilities in our unit,” Prakash says. “Today, our children have found their own path.”

The challenges

It is late noon in Hupari, and the town is abuzz with work as artisans scramble to meet the surging national demand for the Deepavali festival. Kanchan is working overtime to complete her orders. “Women don’t complain. We work hard, and don’t leave any battle halfway,” Kanchan says. “Not because we are born like that, but because the world around us makes us that way. A woman has to stand up for herself.”

As young men find employment in the nearby government industrial estate at Kagal town, Hupari’s young women have stepped in, with better education than even a generation ago. Yet, behind the festive rush, Hupari’s famed silver industry faces severe structural bottlenecks.

Sharp fluctuations in global silver prices routinely compress profit margins for local artisans, while a continued reliance on hand tools restricts production speed and design consistency.

Financial vulnerability runs deep: limited access to formal banking drives small workshop owners into high-risk informal credit networks just to keep their businesses afloat. Compounding these issues are low piece-rate wages and demanding physical labour, which make it difficult to retain skilled artisans or attract younger generations. Furthermore, the absence of direct export facilities and modern digital marketing leaves the entire hub dependent on middlemen, preventing artisans from capturing the true value of their craft.

The industry now pins its hopes for long-term sustainability on the proposed Silver Ornament Cluster and the Geographical Indication (GI) tag Hupari Silver Craft received in 2024.

However, for true transformation to take root, Kanchan and many like her believe the path forward is clear: women must be brought to the forefront and given opportunities to lead new aspects of the trade.

After the Deepavali orders leave Hupari’s narrow alleys to sparkle across the nation, the soft clinking of silver will continue to echo in its dim homes all year round.

radheshyamj@gmail.com