Seven Women and Eighty Rupees

On a spring morning in 1959, seven women climbed the stairs to the terrace of an old building in Girgaum, in the crowded heart of Bombay, now Mumbai. They carried flour, spices and rolling pins.

Up there, under the open sky, they sat down together and began to roll papads: thin, round discs of spiced lentil dough that are dried in the sun and later roasted or fried until they crackle.

By the end of the day they had made four packets. It was 15 March 1959. Nobody watching would have guessed what those four packets would become.

A way to earn from home

The seven women were Gujarati housewives from the same neighbourhood. Their families did not have much money, and they wanted to earn something of their own. But going out to work was not easy for women like them at the time, and they had homes and children to look after.

Papad was something they already knew how to make. It needed very little: lentil flour, spices, oil, a rolling pin and sunshine. It could be fitted around the work of the house.

They needed money to begin, though, and they had none to spare. So they went to Chhaganlal Karamsi Parekh, a respected social worker in the area whom people called Chhaganbapa. He lent them eighty rupees.

With it they bought what they needed to start. One of the seven, Jaswantiben Jamnadas Popat, would stay with the work for the rest of her long life.

No charity, only business

Chhaganbapa gave the women more than a loan. He gave them a way of working.

He told them to run it as a proper business, not as a charity. They should not accept donations or gifts, even from people who wanted to help. They should stand on their own feet and pay back what they had borrowed.

He also told them not to cut corners. In the early days the women made two kinds of papad, a good one and a cheaper one. He advised them to make only the best, and they did. From then on, quality was not something to bargain with.

They sold their first packets to a merchant in the busy Bhuleshwar market. The papads sold, and the merchant wanted more.

Rain on the rooftop

The work grew quickly. Neighbours heard about it, and more women came to join. According to Lijjat's own history, there were more than twenty within a few months, and by the end of the second year there were hundreds.

Then the monsoon came. Papads have to dry in the sun, and in Mumbai the rains last for months. That first year, the work simply stopped until the sky cleared.

The next year they were ready. They bought a cot and a stove and dried the papads indoors, over the heat, so that the rolling could carry on through the rain. It was a small, practical answer to a problem, the kind they would find again and again.

In their first year, the women's sales came to a little over six thousand rupees. They paid back Chhaganbapa's eighty.

Everyone an owner

In 1962 the group held a small competition to name their papad. A member suggested "Lijjat", a Gujarati word meaning tasty, and won a prize of five rupees. The organisation became Shri Mahila Griha Udyog Lijjat Papad.

Its rules grew out of those early days. Every woman who joins is a member and an owner, not an employee, and the members call one another "sister". Profits and losses are shared. The organisation still does not accept donations.

The daily rhythm has hardly changed. Early each morning, members collect ready-mixed dough from their local branch. They roll the papads at home, in their own time, and bring them back the next day to be checked and packed. They are paid for their work, often every day.

Six decades later

Lijjat is now one of the best-known names in Indian kitchens. It has branches across the country, and tens of thousands of women are its members. Many of them have used their earnings to send children to school and college, to build homes and to stand a little taller in their families.

In 2021, the Government of India awarded Jaswantiben Popat the Padma Shri, one of its highest civilian honours. She was in her nineties, one of the seven women from the rooftop in Girgaum.

The story is often told as a story about papads. It is really a story about seven women who decided they would not wait to be helped.

Want to read more?

Lijjat's own website tells the history of the organisation and sets out the principles it has kept since 1959. The Padma Awards records of the Government of India list Jaswantiben Popat's honour.