The football you pick up from swanky atheleisure stores or even the old-fashioned stand-alone sports shop does not come from traditional football playing nations Brazil, Argentina or even Germany and France. So, the next time you bargain with the storekeepers who insist on rates that could buy you an English PL ticket, tell them “Sisola.”
Sisola village under the Meerut tehsil in Uttar Pradesh is the hub of football making in the country. Unfortunately, the hamlet has not been able to produce even one footballer of national repute. A largely backward cluster of homes, the village is even today a stereotype of rural India’s reality. No pucca roads, frequent power cuts and restricted timings for water.
However, of the 1,800 families in the village, 1,500 families are now self-reliant. They are affixed to small and big football making industries. The salary for sewing each football is Rs 15 and on an average, each family makes Rs 500 per day on a minimum. The Sisola youth do not leave the village for jobs in bigger towns or cities. Being unlettered is the primary challenge and a skilled hand at a job, the other. There are even instance of families who have got together and started a small football making unit.
Ask village elders about how the trade became a familial practice and they say: “One Dhaniram arrived here from Meerut some four decades ago. He was a skilled football maker and seeing him, a host of us picked up the profession.”
Cutting, sewing and finishing work is done here by bringing raw material from the city. Any Sisola-made football is set apart by its strong strings and adroit craftsmanship.
Little wonder then that when the pandemic ravaged through livelihoods, Sisola was busy sewing footballs. “Our daughters who marry outside the village end up imparting the skill and thus the hub is growing,” share the villagers.
Meerut is known for quality sporting goods, including football as well as cricket bats, balls and stumps. Sadly, it involves the use of widespread child labour.
