Around 2500 artisans from five different handicraft clusters of the Valley will soon be able to sell their products online to the customers across the world.
As per officials, this will be possible by an initiative—Restoration and Strengthening of Livelihoods— under the Jhelum Tawi FloodRecovery Project funded by the World Bank. The initiative, officials said, wasaimed to make artisans self reliant.
The initiative which focuses to empower the 2014flood-affected artisans is being undertaken jointly by the Industries andHandicrafts departments. “We have a total of 5 clusters where hand-holding ofartisans is being done right from product conceptualisation to marketing of thehandicrafts,” said an official.
The five clusters in which the empowerment of artisans is takingplace include embroidery cluster at Noorbagh and paper machie cluster atZadibal in Srinagar; the wool cluster in Bandipora and willow wicker cluster inGanderbal have also seen activity under this initiative.
“We have two domain experts from outside the Valley drivingthis initiative. One of these technicalsupport agencies is named Rangasutra which is Rajasthan-based and another isSasha which is Kolkatta-based,” the official said.
He said the focus of this initiative was to eliminate themiddle man and ensure that artisans get the maximum profit from theirhandicrafts. “The artisan self-helpgroups are being given the shape of producer companies who will becomeself-reliant to receive and deliver client orders soon,” he said.
As of now handicrafts made by the artisans from theseclusters are displayed on websites of technical support agencies but “artisansare being trained in e-commerce to deal directly with their clients,” theofficial said.
“Right now theartisans in Zadibal and Noorbagh clusters are making orders worth Rs 1 crorewith a lot of products being made in embroidery. There has been somedisturbance earlier due to prevailing situation and now the Covid19 outbreak,but still artisans continue to work from their homes,” the official said.
Parveena Sofi, an artisanfrom Noorbagh Srinagar said she has been involved in the project for last oneand a half years during which the artisans have received a great boost. “We seta target of making certain number of handicrafts and have been successful indoing so. We have several orders and despite the pandemic we are’commissioning’ work orders to artisans. This initiative is working in theright direction,” said Sofi who is also been designated as a craft managerunder the project.
Aaliya Kulsum, ProjectCoordinator for the initiative said the artisans who are a part of it are alsogetting opportunity to participate in World Bank exhibitions. “The initiativeis working even at a time when entire economy is shut. The artisans acknowledgethis project and want to be trained more to become self reliant,” Kulsum said.
Officials say a part of the Rs 100 crore World Bankassistants would be used for conducting the artisans’ baseline survey to createa virtual database of all craftsmen involved in Kashmir art.
As per official records, there are 2.32 lakh unregisteredhandicraft artisans in J&K who are unable to get any benefit of governmentincentives and schemes. “In order to bring the marginalized artisans into themainstream, we plan to register 50,000 artisans on the department web portal inthe next one year,” said the official.
He said the geo-mapping of artisan clusters such as DowntownSrinagar and Wathoora in Budgam district will help identify neglectedcraftsmen. “Becoming a part of theportal will help artisans to do marketing of their products in a better way andwill eradicate the middle men. We intend to have each artisan running a virtualshowroom and expect this online facility to help them reach a wider clientbase,” said the official.