Research Study
Searching Sustainability : Assessing Practices in the India Handicrafts Sector
to enable Market Readiness and encourage Environmental Sustainability
Background : India’s traditional handicrafts and handloom sectors have the attributes of a 'green economy', with their USP of being local, indigenous, culturally rooted, low energy, and socially and economically enabling for the communities who have held these knowledge systems for centuries. This makes the sector ideally placed to compete in environment-conscious markets across the world. However, the lack of proper assessment and recognition of the crafts sector as green is hindering its promotion in these markets. Measuring and ensuring compliance in the Indian handicrafts sector is a big challenge because of the unorganized nature of the sector. Textiles, leather tanning, pottery and clay crafts as well as metal-based craft processes, for example, cause significant air and water pollution. Fulfilling compliance requirements for global markets also adds a significant cost burden on manufacturers, especially the smaller artisans and artisan organizations. Additionally, laws and regulations of India have become very strict regarding pollution generated by small scale enterprises and cottage industries, which has led to closing down of production units at scale across multiple crafts clusters (e.g., block printing cluster of Sanganer, Rajasthan) because they do not adhere to established environmental regulations of the Central Pollution Control Board. However, no efforts have been made to actually build capacity of this sector or integrate resources so that production-related environmental compliances can be fulfilled. Also, no standard setting system and capacity building model and data exist in India currently for denoting and strengthening the industry of crafts as green/ environmentally sustainable.
In 2017, All India Artisan and Craftworkers Welfare Association (AIACA), a membership-based organization for the handloom and handicraft sector, proposed the introduction of a Green Mark for craft practices that seeks to create consensus among various stakeholders for positioning crafts as a potential ‘green’ sector. As a step towards building such a platform, a study was undertaken to map the nature of current craft practices across various craft techniques and materials to get a first-hand insight about the challenges and opportunities for the sector in the context of the sustainability discourse today. This study was visualized as an on-the field assessment and sought to understand sustainability in the Indian context and derive a framework that could be used to position the sector as a green economy.
Here's a sneak peak!
"Different techniques of bell making are a tradition across pastoral communities in India. In Kutch, these bells are used by the Maldharis. I learnt that the distinctive feature of the traditional metal bells of Kutch is its sound. The bell which is largely made from iron and tin scrap in a mix of forging and coating techniques with firing is finely tuned by the artisan until it resonates in a certain way. These are personalised with three kinds of sounds - 'सराए', which is a tingling sort of sound used for smaller animals, the 'हक्कड़', which is a sharp, loud tone used for cattle, and the 'उथोड़', which is even sharper and louder and is used for bigger animals like the buffalo and camel."
Many of these artisans are micro-entrepreneurs and some own small to medium sized businesses across crafts, materials and geography. Some of the crafts are over a 1000 years old.
