Creating Sustainable Interventions for Artisans Development of Orissa Handicrafts

Dr Manjusmita Dash

India is a well-known country for its rich culture, heritage as well as its unique handicrafts. From time immemorial, Orissa has carved out a name for itself in the field of handicrafts. The gifted artisans could produce wonderful objects of craft from simple materials. Their rare artistic skill has been streamlined in the manufacture of exquisite household pieces. Orissa’s unique topography and the gracious nature bestowed their choicest blessings on the artisans of Orissa. Orissa handicrafts items are acknowledged to be among the best in the country and also abroad due to their beauty, elegance and exquisite designs. This sector of economy directly or indirectly provides employment to more than one lakh people of the state. The nimble fingers of the craftsmen turned every article they touched into a thing of joy. The present article focuses on identifying the challenges faced by the artisans for marketing their handicrafts. The study covers the overall problems being faced by the artisans. If proper measures are not taken to help the artisans and provide support to them, then the beautiful art will have to face extinction. In this backdrop, the present research paper is an endeavor to study various avenues of social and economic upliftment of state in terms of revenue generation, foreign exchange, raising standard of labors, employment generation and sustainable approach for overall improvement of handicrafts. Today it has become difficult to understand the real difference between handmade craft and a semi handmade crafts produced in a factory.The intervention of industries to produce manipulated handicrafts inspired by the low cost fine finished imported goods and artifacts from the countries like China and the marketing strategy to sale these products has been the main source of the decline in the growth of the genuine handmade crafts.The paper focuses on the contemporary challenges as well as the scope of handicraft sector in the state of Orissa and thereby providing suitable interventions in order to make industry more market oriented and sustainable in future.