 "Channapatna, Karnatka, Toys")
The lacquered and handcrafted wooden toys from Karnataka’s famous ‘toy town’ of Channapatna, nestled between Bengaluru and Mysuru, have lost their sheen. The once bustling roadside stores selling indigenous toys now wear a desolate look as they are unable to compete with the changing market dynamics. The dust has settled in many of the famed wooden rocking horses that once enticed customers from a distance.
Despite positive developments such as increased consumer awareness and a geographical indication certification, challenges remain for many artisans.
Challenges like changing market preferences, inadequate government support, and cheap imports from China have, in recent times, been exacerbated by the pandemic, goods and services tax, and demonetisation, leading several artisans to abandon the craft and become daily-wage labourers or garment factory workers.
The recently built 119-kilometre-long Bengaluru-Mysuru expressway has further adversely impacted the livelihoods of these artisans.
“Earlier, commuters would stop by our shops and purchase some products. Today, the expressway takes them straight to Mysuru, and nobody even gets a chance to look at our stores. Similar toys are available in Mysuru, and whoever is interested ends up buying there,” laments Ravi Gowda, owner of a toy store in Channapatna, a town within Ramanagara district, which forms a majority of Bengaluru Rural constituency.
Ahead of the general elections in Karnataka, artisans who work at these toy factories are demanding the upcoming government to create a conducive business environment for them and save their “dying” art.
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“The government should help us with the supply of raw materials at the best prices and create an organised system to manufacture these toys… the government should set up a welfare office to understand the needs of the artisans and then try to address them,” says Amit Kumar, manager at another toy store.
“Several governments have come and gone, and we have stated our challenges multiple times, but they have fallen on deaf ears. We still have little hope left that some form of help will be offered to us this time,” adds Kumar.
Another artisan said that the government should help them with microloans.
“We are a small-scale industry, and we won’t be able to sustain without support from the government. We urge them to look into our problems,” said Ravi, who goes by his first name.
“The business for most of the shops here has gone down by about 70-80 per cent in the past two/three years. If no help is offered to us, we will not be able to survive,” Ravi added.
The Indian toy market is estimated at $1.5 billion, and Karnataka is the third-largest market with a size of about $159 million.
As demand for these indigenous toys continues to go downhill, the number of traditional artisans in Channapatna has declined from around 3,500 in the 1990s to about 1,200 currently, according to some estimates.
It remains to be seen whether the government succeeds in removing the dust and bringing back the lost sheen to the toy story!
