This Padmashree Awardee Began Knitting Manipuri Shoes Out Of Poverty & Now Dominates Global Markets

Manipur is a region that is rich in traditional arts and crafts, and yet remains latent most of the time due to a lack of proper accessibility, resources, and so on. The people living within the villages of Manipur keep their arts alive by the small means possible, and few others lean onto the traditionally practised arts for sustenance.

Mukutmoni Moirangthem of Kakching town is one such woman who was initially nudged into reviving the Manipuri knitting style due to poverty. Three decades later, she maintains a large-scale production line of Manipuri knitted shoes out of love for the art. Her shoes now have a market not just within Manipur but also abroad.

Picked Up Knitting Out Off Desperation

Moirangthem is a 64-year-old mother from Kakching who was married off at the young age of 16 by her widowed mother. She picked up her knitting needles about three decades ago as she could not afford to buy new shoes for her school-going daughter. Ridden by poverty, she turned to the traditional craft of knitting Manipuri shoes and said, "I had no money back then and had to constantly repair the shoes. So I removed the shoe's upper and substituted it with a hand-knitted one I made with the wool left after knitting mufflers and socks."

Adding on to this, she said that many other women in the region used to traditionally knit woollen socks and mufflers at home, and Moirangthem did the same for her three children whenever she returned from her work at the paddy fields.

The shoes that she stitched managed to stand out among all others and soon caught the eyes of a teacher at the school her daughter attended. "This is how it all began," said Moirangthem, as quoted from an article by the New Indian Express.

Soon she began working with more people and switched from simple hand held tools to lot more efficient ones for increased production. The hand-knitted shoes started gaining attention and were spotted by army personnel deployed in the region. These personnel played a pivotal role in taking the Manipuri shoes outside Manipur.

The Army men had expressed their fascination with the product, and kept ordering from Moirangthem often. Emboldened by the response she received, she then set up her company Mukta Shoes Industry, in the year 1990. Showcasing her products at trade fairs and different towns, she gradually picked up the market dynamics and placed her hand-knitted products in the centre of it.

Taking The Craft To Greater Heights

"My shoes were a big hit in Imphal. They then travelled to a fair at the Pragati Maidan in New Delhi in 1997, where I sold 1500 pairs in only five days," beamed Moirangthem, who now deals with large-scale orders that come along from Kolkata to Japan.

There are fans worldwide for her hand-knitted shoes, and orders continue to pour in from countries such as Japan, Russia, Singapore and Dubai through a middleman based in Delhi. The essence of the product continued to stay intact regardless of the supply growth, and she conveys how she procures the wool and yarn locally as well as from cities such as Ludhiana.

Around 20 people, mostly women, are employed under her, and even with the increased human resource it gets difficult to meet the growing demand. She narrates how hand-knitting adult-size shoes take about four days to be completed by a person. The prices reflect the effort that goes into knitting the shoes, and it ranges from ₹500 for a baby to ₹2000 for adults.

However, traditional artform comes along with their own challenges, and she says, "Stockpiles of shoes are required to meet any random orders from online stores. We have to be ready for different designs, sizes and colours if we wish to grow." The financial constraints and lack of resources hinder this kind of growth for traditional craftsmen.

This also happens to be one of her fears attached to the craft, as she says that larger firms with better resources could take away the traditional craft and mass produce it for cheaper rates. Not only would this take away the exclusivity of wearing a handicraft, but the art would also lose its meaning.

Moirangthem, who got to know about the procedure of patents recently, said that she would someday like to see the craft get patented in Manipur state and her hometown Kakching. She believes that the art form would then forever remain connected with the land she learned it from.

Adding to this, she was quoted saying, "One day a time will come when I won't be able to make these footwear. Unless a proper mechanism is created, the craft will eventually be lost. The thought breaks my heart." To keep the art alive and rooted, she wishes to set up a training centre where the craft can be taught to youngsters and can teach them to be self-reliant.

Her entrepreneurship and efforts to empower poor women and the youngsters of Manipur were recognised by the Government, who awarded her the Padmashree in 2022 for her art.

Also Read: 15-Year-Old Takes Jharkhand's Forgotten Art Form To Global Levels Through Films