Indian Artisan

 

Indian Artisans

Artisans as we all know are the backbone of non-farm Indian Rural economy. Artisans put their heart and soul to make a product. Apart from farming craft production is what they do to earn livelihood.

However, propelled by loss of markets, declining skills and difficulty catering to new markets, the number of Indian artisans has been rapidly decreasing.

Artisans are unable to earn much out of the hand-crafted items they make. In urban areas people run after modern art and fancy products even though they don’t have much in it. And hence these artisans are lacking in showing their talent. Not having proper platform to showcase their talent has always been one of the major reasons for them to be lagging.

Weavers, potters, block printers, painters and few more together make it an industry of rupees 24,000 crore.

 While artisans got imperial and distinguished support during pre-Independence days and assumed a focal function in Gandhi's autonomy battle, they have gradually lost importance with the appearance of industrialization. At present, the area conveys the disgrace of inadequacy and backwardness, and is seen as "beautifying, fringe and elitist". This is exacerbated by the Government's treatment of artworks as a dusk industry, which has brought about an absence of very much created arrangements and projects to secure and fortify the biological system for craftsman’s.

 

The four fundamental difficulties confronting craftsman’s in making reasonable occupations in the present economy can be depicted as follows:

Low productivity –The sector’s informal nature and the low 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.

Inadequate inputs

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.

 

Dominance of middleman– Although mediators are important to empower powerful market linkages, they regularly, if not generally, abuse craftsman's by paying them a small amount of their reasonable wages. This might be because of absence of data with respect to brokers about obvious assembling costs, or simply because of their capacity to constrain craftsmen's, who regularly need haggling power.