The 67-year-old Handmade Paper Institute (HPI) here, the oldest handmade paper manufacturing unit in the country, hopes to revive Sonia Gandhi’s memories about an invitation card that says: “To celebrate the wedding of Rajiv and Sonia, Shrimati Indira Gandhi invites... to a reception at 6 pm on Monday, February 1968 at Hyderabad House, New Delhi.” A footnote adds: “Please bring this card with you.”

The reason: The institute, whose production unit also printed the first copy of the Constitution, is facing the threat of being privatised, for want of Rs 2 crore as working capital.

No wonder then that Vimal Bansode, a 50-year-old widow and one of the 94 workers in the HPI production department, wants to call on Madam. “Soniaji is the most powerful person in country. She should save the institute nurtured by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Indiraji,” says Bansode.

Nehru, Indira and Rajiv had a soft spot for the institute, inaugurated by Nehru in 1940 to fulfil Mahatma Gandhi’s dream of setting up a handmade paper unit to train people and produce a variety of paper that would compete with machine-made paper. It’s now history that Nehru and Indira used paper from the institute for their letterheads and personal letters. They ensured that government departments used handmade paper.

Sonia Gandhi has reason to remember the institute, says Ganesh Gaikwad, Bansode’s comrade in arms, who along with other workers in the production unit has not been paid for 18 long months. In 1989, when Rajiv was Prime Minister, to respond to all New Year greetings received by the Prime Minister’s Office, Sonia had chosen HPI as her print location. But after that, for some reason, HPI fell off the radar of the first family.

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