Why repair cafe does not work here ?

Organising a repair cafe in a city where repair services are round the corner and knowledge of repair skills are not regarded highly…

Repair cafe Bangalore has a pop-up format. So volunteers travel long distances to organize just a 3 hour workshop. For the collaboration with Azim Premji University (APU) (Physics Lab) volunteers travelled from across the city. Some ended up spending almost 12- hours of the day. The volunteers are passionate about repair and they are willing to go. On their part, the APU team is mindful of this travel pain and organised transport through cabs. 

On the occasion of International Repair Day, worldwide organisations like Restart Project, The Repair Cafe Foundation and others advocate for Right to Repair Campaigns. In India, the Right to Repair is not recognized as a statutory right but courts and antitrust agencies have tacitly recognized this right. On our part as citizens we continue to organize the pop-up workshops to propagate the idea of repairing and developing hand skills. 

It is a matter of irony for us that in some workshop there are more volunteers than participants. At the Physics lab the same thing happened. However the silver lining as always is those few who attend are really passionate. The team is surprised with some student volunteers who are extremely good with their hand skills. They participate actively in the workshop as they need guidance to gain more confidence. 

The lab is well stocked with tools. One of the interesting ones was a self-adjusting wire stripper and cutter. The facilities are in place but how many students actually make their way to this gem of a facility is another story altogether. All’s well that ends well. But there are many miles to go yet. A single repair cafe workshop was just a primer. An interested group of students/teachers/other staff can come together and attract others. It's a process and only through persistence can the barrier be surmounted. 

Will there be another repair workshop? It’s a question which needs to be thought through. 

-By Himadri Das and Purna Sarkar