Saving local crafts

EDUCATION

A NiFT initiative aims to save the value of artisans by helping them adapt to modern ways.

There's quite a market for the traditional artefacts and textiles of our country "" you only have to visit Dilli Haat or Surajkund to see that. So why do our artisans continue to languish in poverty and the ancient arts and crafts die for want of patronage?

Perhaps, it's the lack of innovative marketing, perhaps the product designs haven't kept up with evolving tastes, perhaps the techniques of production are no longer cost effective.

Over the last year or so, the students and faculty of the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NiFT) have been working on just these issues with around 2,000 artisans in five clusters "" Surendranagar, Hampi, Santiniketan, Kozhikode and Dhar near Indore.

The objective, says Gauri Kumar, NiFT's director general, is to "involve students in every part of the value chain and to give them an exposure to the weavers".

It is Kumar's belief that academic institutions need to be catalysts of change, helping society think "radically", and not merely "incrementally".

The Cluster Development Initiative, a Rs 3 crore project under the Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojna, now forms a good six weeks of the NiFT curriculum.

But however much it helps the students, the infrastructure that NiFT has put in place under the initiative "" studios with CAD, and technology and resource centres at the hub of every cluster "" will greatly help artisans modernise their product design and technology.

The innovative products developed of this student-artisan interface "" Surendranagar's single ikkat and tangalia textiles never-before seen textures and colours, Dhar brassware in various non-traditional shapes and so on "" were shown at the international conference of Art of Living in Bangalore last month.

"In the two hours we were open," says Kumar, "we sold worth Rs 2 lakh which is quite a lot if you consider that everything was priced at Rs 500-600."

Encouraged, Kumar is ready to take the experiment further. NiFT has taken up around 1,500 square feet space at the Rajiv Gandhi Bhawan.

This will be in April and Kumar is also in talks with established retailers like ITC Lifestyle and Landmark for shop-in-shops "" "we're looking to leverage every opportunity", she says. Kumar has even come up with a brand name, "i.e" with "a NiFT initiative" written in small print alongside, for the range.

The beneficiaries of the exercise will be the craftsmen who'll find an outlet for their produce without having to go through middlemen. NiFT, which will be investing in developing the brand, will keep a royalty for itself.

Indeed, NiFT with its immense experience in the area of textiles and design, can really help the craftsmen. But a number of similar initiatives have been taken up in the decades since independence, many of which have sputtered to a stop. Will the NiFT initiative be able to sustain itself?