A man in his late fifties with a hunchback leans forward as he reads what is locally known as “Kalbaaf Taleem” (Carpet Weaver’s instructions) and meshes threads. He will reach the final stroke in the next couple of days that will result in the fruition of a masterpiece – a piece of carpet that may decorate royal palaces, presidential houses or any other place of global repute. The weaver, who worriedly drives his apparatus on the carpet hung in front of him, is anxious about his wages. He is least aware that in his colourful threads, he weaves the culture, craft and civilization, all in one seamless flow – fusing all of it together in a piece of carpet.
But the sight has dwindled, the industry in shambles and the hopes of revival too bleak. This applies to almost all traditional crafts – Paper Machie, Wood Carving, Pashmina Works; all seem to have suffered the same fate.
Handicraft industry stands handicapped, unable to stay apace with emerging market trends, plagued by middlemen culture and pushed to footnotes by the wuthering apathy of government and concerned agencies. The decay of handicrafts is not only an economic misfortune, depriving us of our perennial occupations but is also a cultural and civilisational loss, no less than the loss of language, political autonomy, a sense of self-identity of the nation and people. What is culture and civilization but a fabric made of the warp and woof of these socio-economic mores, cultural continuities and the signatures of indigenous and vernacular goods. As the threads loosen, one after the other, the fabric of culture will clove asunder without much attention.
Profusion of machine made goods, the discomforting fraudulence, falling out of sync from market trends and the indifference of the government are some of the reasons that immediately come to mind while one tries to figure out the reasons for the decay of our artisanship and handicrafts. The first of these – the indiscriminate profusion of machine made goods seems to have no answer as history teaches us. The arrival of the printing press, for example, led to the downfall and absolute decadence of as large an industry as calligraphy and overnight made thousands of scribes redundant. In the presence of machine made goods, the hand-made goods only retain their importance for the elite with refined aesthetic sense and the simultaneous abundance of resources to meet these resources. But can this vast industry, the industry that includes dozens of specialised crafts survive on the whims of the economic elite? People, who are themselves in a state of economic constraint are little bothered about the intricacies and superfine underpinnings of an artistic masterpiece and they are in no mood to purchase a good against the amount that can otherwise sustain them for a year. In an imbroglio like this, the government can and must play an active role by allocating remunerations to artisans, take the task of export into its own hands and assure that the finished goods reach the market places where they are needed the most. There is a dire need of capital infusion into this dying industry if the government wants to keep it alive and bring it on par with the global standards.
The conundrum of pervasive and malafide presence of spurious and fake items under the pretext of genuine handicrafts has been lately addressed by the concerned agencies by such means as GI tagging and product specific brand stampings. This might go a long way to help the customers to distinguish the fake from genuine and to save themselves of fraudulence and trickstery. The onus lies on the artisans to update themselves about GI tagging and its relevance to their product and the marketing thereof so as to carve a niche of their own in brand creation. Adjacent to fakery is the overwhelming ignorance of artisans to the emerging marketing strategies, the use of E-commerce and other online services which could have otherwise boosted their products and placed them at par with the global trends. Both government and NGOs are actively pursuing this case of updating the artisans on this front and in this week itself, ELFA International, a Kashmir based humanitarian body organized a massive training and sensitization workshop with craftsmen drawn from almost across the spectrum and had threadbare sessions with them on emergent trends in production and marketing sector, informing them also of the steps taken by government in this direction. About the government, it can be said that the picture isn’t entirely bleak but it is instead the lack of information about the schemes and initiatives taken by the government for the welfare of craftsmen that leads to missing out an opportunity. The schemes initiated by DHC at the central level and the ones implemented by HSC at state level all are for the up gradation of the crafts and craftsmen, but the ignorance of the same results in loss of opportunities.
The aforesaid remedies as figured out have to work in sync, in resonance to rejuvenate this otherwise gasping industry and while rescuing it and taking it to shores, there’s a hope that we will be recreating not only employment for the coming generation, but connecting them to their roots, with dignity and prosperity.
Views expressed in the article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial stance of Kashmir Observer
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