Saheli Women x Mountain and Plains Fibershed

"Madhu does not want this to be the reason you support Saheli Women. In her own words, her ladies are artists - they “do not want your sympathy.” What she seeks instead is genuine cross-cultural exchange and storytelling in both directions."

Article and reporting by Abby Powell

When in Doubt, Add Color: Meet Saheli Women

Amid the colorful and chaotic energy of Saheli Women’s atelier, marigold flowers, bright as the sun shining above them, are being planted for the summer season. 

Saheli Women is a social enterprise economically empowering rural women in Rajasthan through slow fashion. In Kali Beri, one of the villages where Saheli Women works, artisanal skills thrive: from handloom and spinning to natural dyeing, block printing, and more. Saheli Women collaborates with international fashion partners, leveraging traditional craft practices to create meaningful livelihoods. The marigold flowers being planted are part of Saheli Women’s natural dye garden, just one element of the farm-to-fashion process these women are involved in. 

Founded over a decade ago, Saheli Women’s mission is to bring empowerment, education, financial independence, and accessible sustainability to the ladies of rural Rajasthan. Saheli Women is grounded in Vandana Shiva’s principle of Earth Democracy - a radical reimagining of democracy that centers both ecological and social justice. Humans are part of Earth’s living and breathing system, rather than the other way around. Thus, Saheli Women builds an environmentally responsible community of the women, by the women, and for the women.

So, when Founder Madhu Vaishnav discovered that her organic cotton supplier was not, in fact, organic, she did what she does best: empower women and the Earth. In 2025, she launched the Saheli Kappas pilot program across eight female-headed households in the villages of Bhikamkor and Shri Ramdev Nagar. The goal: to revive indigenous cotton farming by empowering women farmers, improving soil health, and restoring environmentally aligned practices. This is especially significant considering that in these communities, men traditionally head the households and control finances. Madhu made a subversive choice to place the income directly into the hands of female farmers instead. 

Now, she can oversee the organic cotton farming process herself, ensuring sustainability and transparency. In the first year, key successes included higher soil health perception, reduced chemical exposure, improved decision making confidence, and strong willingness to scale. The Saheli Kappa's program, however, was not also without its challenges. The initial reason for Madhu’s disapproval of mainstream organic cotton certifications, being their use of pesticides, is also the most difficult aspect of organic farming to achieve - but Madhu remains undeterred. 

Madhu effortlessly embodies ahimsa, or non-violence. In India, this practice extends beyond the sacred cow, revered for its associations with abundance, motherhood, and nurture, to creatures often overlooked, such as the mosquito. Just as cow manure is used as organic fertilizer, Madhu believes mosquitoes, too, have a role to play. 

The pilot program initially relied on yellow sticky mosquito traps and neem oil, a natural and biodegradable extract pressed from the seeds of the neem tree, native to India. In South Asia, neem oil is so widely used that it also appears in face oils and hair treatments. I personally cannot help but wonder if a neem-based body lotion might help keep the bug bites away? 

However, these strategies were only partially effective in repelling mosquitoes. Madhu sought an even kinder solution: planting a ring of vibrant marigold flowers around the cotton fields in addition to the neem oil. As she explains, mosquitoes are drawn to the color yellow. The marigolds would distract them from the cotton while providing a safe crop for the insects, without disrupting the cotton-growing process.

For Madhu, agriculture is not an industry but a culture, as valuable as art and fashion. This is where her embodiment of Vandana Shiva’s Earth Democracy becomes essential: farming is more than a supply chain to optimize; it is a living relationship between people and the planet. 

It matters that movements like Fibershed recognize practitioners like Madhu as originators of knowledge and exemplars of innovative frameworks. This recognition feels more urgent than ever, as artificial intelligence becomes central to research and decision-making in both agriculture and fashion. Practitioners of indigenous and traditional knowledge are increasingly silenced. For instance, Textile Exchange reported that in 2022, only 5% of 252 surveyed fashion and textile companies consulted local communities when developing their sustainability strategies. 

But Madhu does not want this to be the reason you support Saheli Women. In her own words, her ladies are artists - they “do not want your sympathy.” What she seeks instead is genuine cross-cultural exchange and storytelling in both directions. She wants to learn not only about other farmers’ successes but also their failures. 

Her goal for the coming year is to establish local ginning, blowing, carding, and spinning capacity, continuing to build a decentralized cotton ecosystem rooted in transparency, traceability, and environmental responsibility, from seed to yarn to garment.

In the spirit of said cross-cultural exchange, Madhu welcomes support and collaboration. Personally, I would like to add that there is at least one thing we can learn from Madhu and the ladies of Saheli Women: when in doubt, add a little color. 

Learn more about Saheli Women's Group through their Website and follow them on Instagram for a peak into their work and lives.