Also posted at WorldChanging.

A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, President of India, urges artisans in India to blend traditional arts with new technology. With a view to better market their skills, get a good price for their produce and for sustainable development for the small-scale sector of handloom weavers.

He talks of a five point programme :

"The programme would identify the core strength of a village cluster and infuse technology, impart vocational training with state-of-the-art technology, create a consortium of industry, research, academia and successful co-operative societies, give entrepreneurial training and incorporate the use of Internet ..... "

Nice vision, Mr. President.

There are some initiatives already underway. Indext-C, a Gujarat Government endeavour has been created to provide information and guidance in organising the Cottage & Rural Industries sector as a catalyst for a better quality of life for artisans and small entrepreneurs.

The COTTAGE INDUSTRY-GLOBAL MARKET (CIGM) project works with womenís craft cooperatives in the Kangra District of Himachal Pradesh, India to support capacity building and local development. K2Crafts is the online marketplace for the CIGM project, established to market the cooperativesí hand-made, world-quality shawls. There's a whole lot of interesting master's theses covering research by CCT students on different aspects of the project: strategies for sustainable development, generating social capital, women's empowerment, and Internet branding for local industries.

PEOPLink, a non-profit organization has been guiding women communities in countries like India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Haiti and Kenya, involved with handicrafts to place their products online, and building a global network of Trading Partners (TPs). The TPs have digital cameras that allow easy uploading of images, which are in turn used as promos to retail and wholesale buyers in the industrialized countries.

The Asian Center for Entrepreneurial Initiatives (AsCent) has made an attempt to introduce CAD / CAM technologies to artisans in the Belgaum district of Karnataka, alongside online advertising and sales.

I haven't really tracked how each of these endeavours is doing. Does anyone know how they are doing, or of any sort of tracking measures?

Perhaps early days. Still, they are likely to bring about long term economic and social changes in the lives of artisans by laying the foundation for a new kind of rural e-commerce based on greater information flows. Production, marketing and delivery mechanisms would be revolutionised, opening up new opportunities. The middleman who takes away huge margins would be marginalised, and the artisans vulnerability replaced with empowerment. There would be more regularization due to systems that track and maintain quality controls. And as a result, these projects would help bring into the fold artisans who have so far been denied the opportunity to participate in and benefit from the progress India is making, by reversing the dissipation of our rich traditions of arts and craft.

In the words of the President : "Time has come for the small scale industries and handloom weavers not to depend on sales entirely through government subsidies. It is important to generate a new class of entrepreneur and new class of training." ..... "Instead of craft persons and weavers coming to urban marketing centres, the reverse phenomena has to take place".

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