India’s crafts sector is in disarray While crafts received royal and aristocratic patronage during pre-Independence days and

played a
ncentral role in Gandhi’s independence struggle, they have slowly lost relevance with the advent of industrialization. Currently, the
sector carries the stigma of inferiority and backwardness, and is viewed as “decorative, peripheral and elitist”. This is compounded
by the Government’s treatment of crafts as a sunset in low dustry, which has resulted in a lack of well-developed policies and
programs to protect and strengthen the ecosystem for artisans. The four main challenges facing artisans in creating sustainable
livelihoods in today’s economy can be described as follows:
1. Low productivity –The sector’s informal nature and the education of most artisans create issues such as: Unorganized
production – As a largely unorganized sector, handicrafts faces problems such as a paucity of professional infrastructure
such as work sheds, storage space, shipping and packing facilities. Low education – Many crafts require the entire
household to participate in production in some capacity. In many cases, crafts also serve as a seasonal source of income for
agricultural households. This means that children miss school, resulting in low education levels for the family overall. The
lack of education makes it difficult to manage inventory, access government schemes and market information and bargain
with traders and middlemen. It is estimated that in 2003 around 50% of heads of households of crafts producing families
had no education whatsoever, and more shockingly, around 90% of the women in these households were completely
uneducated, according to a report published in Economic and Political Weekly 2003, by World Bank titled Handmade in
India: Preliminary Analysis of Crafts Producers and Crafts Production. Outdated production methods – Artisans may also lack
the financial capability to upgrade technology in production, or undergo necessary training on a regular basis, as would be
available to them in a formal work setting. This compromises the quality of their products and raises the cost of production.
2. Inadequate inputs – There are three main issues: Lack of quality raw materials – Rural artisans often lack access to quality
raw materials. Due to the low volumes required, they have low bargaining power and are forced to buy sub-standard
materials at a higher price. In crafts such as weaving, handloom weavers have to compete with the power loom industry for
high quality raw materials, which are more easily accessible the to the power loom industry as a result of government
subsidies. Lack of funding – Craft producers suffer greatly from lack of working capital and access to credit and loan
facilities. Banks cite poor recovery rates, wrong utilization of funds, lack of marketing facilities for finished products and lack
of education on part of the borrowers as reasons for the low proportion of loans made to artisans. In general, this forces
artisans to borrow from their local moneylender or trader at high interest rates. The All India Debt and Investment Survey
(2002) showed that the proportion of money borrowed by rural households from money lenders rose by over 10% from
17.5% in 1991 to 29.6% in 2002. Design inputs – In most traditional societies, design evolved in the interaction between the
artisan and the consumer. Further, the artisan was aware of the sociocultural context of the consumer, and could thus
design products that suited their needs and tastes. Due to the breakdown of the historic artisan-consumer relationship, and
the increasing urbanization and globalization of markets for crafts, artisans have difficulty understanding how to tailor their
products to changing demands. The artisan may not speak the same language as the consumer, both literally as well as
metaphorically. An example of this includes women in SEWA’s craft cooperatives who design block printed table napkins
and mats, but may have never used these products themselves
3. Information asymmetry : Due to their low education, artisans often cannot identify potential new markets for their products, nor
do they understand the requirements for interacting with these markets. This reduces their understanding of the market potential
of their goods, the prices of their products in different markets, government schemes instituted for their welfare and diversification
opportunities.
4. Fragmented value chain Lack of market linkages – While consumers of crafts products are increasingly becoming urbanized, crafts
continue to be sold through local markets; artisans have few opportunities to reach new consumers through relevant retail
platforms such as department stores and shopping malls. Further, due to their rural orientation, artisans are often unable to access
training and technology to supply their products to online markets. Dominance of middlemen – Although middlemen are necessary
to enable effective market linkages, they often, if not always, exploit artisans by paying them a fraction of their fair wages. This may
be due to lack of information on the part of middlemen about true manufacturing costs, or merely due to their ability to coerce
artisans, who often lack bargaining power. Lack of aggregation – Crafts production typically takes places in scattered clusters in rural
areas, while markets are usually in urban centers. Currently, there is a lack of organized systems to efficiently aggregate goods from
small producers, carry out quality checks, store approved goods in warehouses, and supply them to wholesalers and retailers in
urban areas. In lieu of this, retailers have to directly source from select producers, which is often not viable in the long run, resulting
in the loss of a large percentage of the market for artisans.
5. Lack of an enabling environment Neglect by central and state governments – The Government views the sector as a sunset
industry, no longer relevant in India’s technology-driven economic growth. Thus, schemes designed for artisans tend to have low
priority in terms of execution and assessment. Within crafts, the Government’s priorities are skewed towards the export market,
with 70% of its crafts budget going towards development of environments to enable export. Further, the fact that the crafts sector
falls under the purview of 17 different Government ministries, ranging from the Ministry of Textiles to Ministry of Women and
Children, results in confusion and inaction. Lack of interest by second generation – Rural youth are increasingly disinterested in
continuing their family craft traditions, for three main reasons. First, having seen their parents struggle to find markets and fair
prices for their products, they are inclined to pursue other trades. Second, the school system today does not integrate lessons
regarding the importance of crafts into the school curriculum, and instead students are pushed towards white collar office jobs,
even if they are lower paying. Finally, crafts are strongly associated with a family’s caste. In many cases, such as leatherwork,
artisans are ostracized for being from the lowest caste, which further dissuades rural youth from joining the family trade.
Handloom weaving is present mostly in rural areas and is primarily a household activity. However, it does not imply that weavers are
independent producers. Some weavers work in cooperative societies where they are shareholders. When these societies fail to
provide work, weavers approach local master weavers, who are engaged in the production and trading of handlooms. The
cooperative society or the master weaver generally supplies yarn and dyes to the weavers. Access to market is in the hands of either
the cooperative society or the master weaver. There is also a small third category of weavers, who do not own looms and work in
sheds organised by the master weaver. Handloom weaving is spread across many states in the country and is in considerable decline
in some of them. For instance, many districts in Telangana have seen a decrease in weaving activities, while the coastal belt in
Andhra Pradesh continues to be strong in handloom weaving. Most districts in Karnataka saw a steady drop in the number of
handlooms. Same is the case in Maharashtra and parts of Uttar Pradesh. It is interesting to note the parallel growth in power looms
in all the areas where handlooms weakened.
Official surveys published by the Office of the Development Commissioner (Handlooms) suggest the number of weaver families
reduced from 124 lakhs in the 1970s to 64 lakhs in 1995, and further down to 44 lakhs in 2010. The failure of the various methods
adopted to protect the handloom sector is clear from this sharp decline in numbers.
In addition to the Handloom Reservation Act, the government brought in handloom marks in 2000, the Geographical Indicator Act
in 2003 and most recently in 2015 the All India Handloom Brand in an effort to promote handlooms. The objective of growth is
sought to be achieved by providing a unique identification for handloom products, thus protecting it from mechanical imitations.
The various markers seek to provide a collective identity for handloom and promote its distinctive character thus improve its
marketability. Most of the schemes in handloom (except the welfare ones) are geared to address the need for support in marketing
through some kind of reservation or brand development. The only exception is the cluster scheme devised a decade back which
purports to catalyse growth in the sector through interventions in infrastructure, training in new designs, new technologies and so
on.
The prime minister’s call for declaring August 7 as World Handloom Day in 2015 comes at a critical time for the sector. Apart from
the regular hardships faced by the sector, the past three years have been particularly difficult. First there was the move in 2013 by
the central government to change the definition of handloom. The intention ostensibly was to remove drudgery in handloom and
sought to obliterate the distinction between handloom and power loom. Under severe opposition from the handloom lobby, the
government dropped the idea. In 2014, there was another idea to scrap or revise the Handloom Reservation Act. Again, this was
postponed after hectic lobbying by activists, handloom organisations and weavers. Moving from framing policies which protect the
sector to a thinking which presupposes handloom can survive only by competing in the mainstream market, we can see the policies
for handloom have come full circle.
Today, the danger is not to specific product identities but to handloom itself. Current state policies show a marked inclination to
move towards highly centralised mills controlling all processes under one roof, in the name of economies of scale. But this should
not result in destroying the decentralised production units to shape the inputs according to the needs of the producer. The
argument to support decentralised industries cannot be using the same economic logic extended to centralised production. We
need to open our minds to new possibilities. If we consider a centralised mechanical production unit, everyone can only be a
worker, a cog in the wheel and can never aspire to being an owner of a product (unless supported by capital). In contrast, traditional
modes of production are organically structured where the process and product are integrally linked to the producer.
Finally, we cannot ignore the growing indifference of consumers towards the identity and origin of any product. The people who
need to connect to unique identities have adopted the anonymity of the city as their personal identity. Our attempt seems to be to
connect such people (consumers) to identities lost in time due to the migration of weavers, depletion of natural resources, changes
in the raw material and so on. In this backdrop, it does not seem strange that so many of the GI registrations are initiated by the
government and put in place by their departments. The identity is no longer owned by the weaving community of that region nor is
it recognised as a unique product by the consumer. Then it is left to the state, which initiated the brand to come forward to take the
ownership.