GST poised to strike death knell in handicrafts sector

the finished product will be prohibitive for production and working capital management of the weavers with input costs going up by almost 23 percent. Subsidies are a way to signal empathy and encouragement to the handloom community and the ministry has to look at this seriously," says Vinutha Subramaniam, CEO and Director, Parisera an online handloom and crafts portal.

“More so because of the lack of education, empowerment of weavers is at stake. There should have been a concentrated focus on creating responsible and accountable co-operative systems that would ensure a fair deal to the weavers. In the absence of that support structure, and the lack of clarity on how GST is going to apply, the small, independent weavers will probably now fall in the clutches if the middlemen. The big players may well be the ones to gain the most,” says Savitha Suri, a handloom revivalist who also manages a serious social media page on handlooms and crafts. Both Savitha and Vinutha feel that handlooms need to be treated kindly so weavers do not lose sustainability. In areas where there are fewer weavers, co-operatives too are not an option.

On the demand generation side, revivalists and handloom marketplaces and social media are doing many things to get respectability for the Indian handcrafted apparel. Social media sector leaders like Suneeta Mishra and Susmita Misra who run the Facebook page Magic of Sarees say that “weaving is the second largest occupation of the country can’t be emphasized enough. In our little way with 20000 members we are working on creating a demand by highlighting specific textile traditions from different regions.” This sentiment is echoed by Sunita Buddhiraja whose page Six yards and 365 days too focuses on only handwoven sarees to be worn all the year and not only on ceremonial occasions. Her page too has about 20,000 members. The much hyped Gandhinagar meet of textiles and handwoven turned out to be a damp squib according to some who participated hoping it would be a business to consumer opportunity but was only a business to business one with no direct impact but in the realm of the “possibility”.

Last week when I wrote about the impact of GST on the contemporary art and its practitioners, my mailbox was inundated with artists friends and others who feared for their survival. And the worst is that they can’t even join co-operative movements but have to fight for survival individually for they don’t have a collective voice.

Dr Alka Raghuvanshi is an art writer, curator and artist and can be contacted on alkaraghuvanshi@yahoo.com