COTTON MANJA (KITE THREAD)

Cotton threads being coloured and glass-coated. Cotton manja is a good business and having good demand in India where people love to fly kites on many festivals. Manja (or manjha) is an abrasive string used for fighter kites in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan. It is gummed, coloured and coated with powdered glass. In Brazil, the mix of glue and powdered glass is called “cerol”. In Chile, the sharp thread is called “hilo curado” (cured thread). Kites are flown throughout the year during specialized kite flying festivals. Manja is used in competition, where two opponents will entangle the kites in the sky in an attempt to cut their opponent’s kites from control by pulling it. The loser’s kite will drift away, having been cut off by the winner’s string. This causes participants to run after and try to capture it when it falls to the ground, a practice known as kite running. In India kites are flying in all months of a year, so the demand for the kite and its thread always maintains its requirement, and in that sense it will create a good business for Bareilly manja workers because it’s a well established fact among the seller buyer and manufacturer’s that the sharp thorn manja of Bareilly considered the best in all over India, but the revealing fact tells some different stories about these suffered manja workers of Bareilly who faces the tough competition from the Synthetic nylon -metallic manja which got the clearance from the government to import in Indian manja market and condition got even worst because more than 50 percent manja market flooded by these Synthetic or Metallic manja 1, consequently the home made bareilly manja loosed their popularity in the market, which is directly attacking to their century old profession because of the price margin. Even sellers augmenting that “Synthetic or Metallic manja’s are in high demand because of the thread strength, cheaper price in comparison to homemade bareilly manja, so ultimately only these manja workers have to face such types of storm, and now the condition is some artisan have changed their profession and some artisans are migrating from one state to another states like Gujarat, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, New Delhi to seek an opportunity where the kite flying festival is going to be happened just because of to earn livelihood.