> [!NOTE]+ Meta > Author:: [[Ashoke Chatterjee]] > Reference:: Deshmukh Memorial Lecture > Date:: 2020 > Tags:: #India > WeftLinks:: [[Economic value of craft]] ### Summary Crafts provide critical economic support for poorer people in India. ### Highlights "For Mahatma Gandhi, craft was wealth interpreted as life." "Handcrafts are thus a socio-economic safety-net, including in some of the nation’s most sensitive areas: the northeast, J&K, and the so-called Naxal Belt or Red Corridor which extends through craft-rich regions." "Yet the official figure of handcrafted exports alone in 2018-19 is between Rs 26-27,000 crores6 and that excludes the export of handmade carpets (which are accounted for separately as Rs 12,364 crores in 2018-197) and gems and jewelry (primarily from" "so-called unorganized units) estimated at around US $40B or a colossal Rs 284,000 crore!8" "The 12th Five Year Plan had projected handcrafts as becoming the largest non-farm sector in rural India, swelling its workforce by 10 percent, doubling output and exporting 18 percent more during 2012-17. According to official pronouncements, the sector comprises 10M-11M artisans. Other estimates take this figure to 200M and above" "Also in 2013, the Inter-American Development Bank developed its concept of “The Orange Economy: An Infinite Opportunity”17. (The choice of ‘Orange’ was inspired by an association with sacredness and a respect for Eastern traditions). This brilliant analysis of creative and cultural opportunities in Latin America argued that if the Orange Economy was a country in 2013, it would be an economy just after Japan in size and ahead of Germany, with the fourth largest labour force in the world (after China, India and the US), and with the value of its global exports double that of Saudi Arabian oil in 2011." "The international trade in crafts/art totaled $35 billion in 2015, representing the most important creative industries sector for exports from developing countries. (India’s 2015 creative exports estimated at $1.6 billion were about 4.6% of the total)." ![[C_D_D_Lecture_Full_PDF.pdf]]