The Hindu Business Line : Raw material, design banks for artisans planned

Artisans in the country need not lose sleep over the scale, marketing, raw material and innovative designs. They will have banks for sourcing raw material and contemporary designs. They can sell their produce at exclusive shopping malls that would come up in all State capitals.

Besides, the Union Government has mapped the handicrafts of the country into 32 broad categories to develop resource centres and design banks for each of these categories.

Grant to artisans

If plans of the Union Government for handicraft sector in the Eleventh Plan are any indication, all artisans, through their federations, will get a grant of Rs 20,000 each to upgrade their activity. “This will help them produce in large numbers. In turn, the federations they represent can offer products in bulk for international players and exporters,” Mr Sanjay Agarwal, Development Commissioner (Handicrafts) in Union Ministry of Textiles, told newspersons here.

He was here in connection with ‘Sourcing Show of Handicrafts’, the second in series being organised by the Ministry.

Besides, the Ministry has approved a plan to construct shopping malls in all State capitals, exclusively to showcase and market handicrafts in the respective States.

“We will take them up in public-private partnerships. We will provide 25 per cent of the project cost (to a maximum of Rs 10 crore). The first in the series would come up in Vasant Kunj (Delhi) at a cost of Rs 45 crore,” he said.

The plan also includes setting up two banks – raw material bank and design bank. For the raw material bank, the Centre would provide Rs 2 crore as seed capital to organisations and corporations that seek to establish such banks. “They can either buy-back or lend material to artisans,” Mr Agarwal said.

Karnataka, Maharasthra and Andhra Pradesh have already shown interest to set up these banks. “We have received good response for such bank (for silk material) we opened in Jammu and Kashmir on a pilot basis,” he pointed out.