Looms are falling silent in Kashmir's handicraft villages

With trade hit by uncertainty and Covid-19, youths are looking elsewhere for employment

On a cold November morning in north Kashmir’s Kanihama village, 20-year-old Adil Shafi Bhat loads his three-wheeler with LPG cylinders. Then slipping on a woollen pheran (tradi­tional Kashmiri cloak), he heads for Srinagar, 20 km away, to get the empty cylinders replaced.

As he drives through the lanes of Kanihama, which the central government in association with the state government is planning to develop as a “Craft Tourism Village” for its contribution towards Kani shawl art, he passes by groups of artisans on their way to the looms. Not long ago, he too would have been one among them.

A promising artisan,