The problem

‘Is there a World Cup for embroidery?’ cries Shanta, a 25 year old Lambani tribal exuberantly. ‘If so, I am going to win it!’ Shanta is one of 300 Lambani women embroiderers Dastkar works with in Karnataka. She has just heard that she is the youngest ever recipient of the National Master Craftsperson Award.

What actually prevents women like Shanta – talented, feisty, incredibly bright, a bit of a rebel (at 18 she left a marriage that went wrong, had a child out of wedlock, and now lives on what she earns by her embroidery) – becoming an international designer-entrepreneur like Ritu Kumar, or a cultural celebrity like Anjoli Ela Menon? Why don’t they feature on Page 3 or the Economic Times? The answer is a combination of education, opportunity and social conditioning. Crafts and craftspeople are simply not part of the mental makeup and mainstream structure of contemporary India. As another Dastkar craftsperson, Shiva Kashyap, a Madhubani painter from North Bihar, said sadly, ‘We may be wage earners but we are still walking on someone else’s feet. Because we lack the tools of education and language, we are still dependent.’

Two years back, I was asked to be part of the National Curriculum Review – presaging a major overhaul of the Indian educational system. My specific task was to head and coordinate a subcommittee to integrate ‘Heritage Crafts’ into the school curriculum. The NCERT committee, consisted of academics, artists, craft authorities, teachers, NGOs, proponents of alternative education, representatives from KVIC (Khadi and Village Industries Commission), NID (National Institute of Design), CCRT (Centre for Cultural Resources and Training), Bal Bhavan, and Shanti Niketan. Others joined us at the meetings to present views and suggestions.

Our overall vision was a rounded and holistic education that equipped the Indian youth of today for the challenges of a global and rapidly developing society while preserving their own cultural assets, traditions and values. We wanted to incorporate the cultural, social and creative attributes of craft into the educational system through both theory and practice, and to ensure that craft was viewed as a professional skill, leading to employment opportunities.

As someone said, ‘Tell me and I’ll forget, show me and I may not remember, involve me and I’ll understand.’

Knowledge is an experience not a formula.

There are some sobering facts that set the scene and focused our minds:

* India is home to 16% of the world’s population.

* India spends 3.8% of its GDP on education and 46% of its population of 15 plus is illiterate.

* Since most of the population growth in India is taking place amongst those who will have the least skills/education when entering the job market, India is likely to be inundated with either completely illiterate or poorly schooled youth and children.

* With 388 million children under 15 years of age, India is facing a major challenge on the educational front.

* 54% of adults in India cannot read or write.

* Craftspeople form the second largest employment sector in India, second only to agriculture. One in every 200 Indians is an artisan.

We had other concerns: Did the term ‘heritage’ send out wrong, revivalist, ‘dead history’ messages to the young? Should the study of heritage crafts be confined to traditional Indian crafts, or extend to contemporary and non-indigenous techniques? How does one make the study of craft relevant and exciting to the urban young? How could the practical experience of working with crafts be translated to textbooks and manuals given the already overcrowded curriculum, and a lack of trained and sensitized teachers. Or ensure that craft should not become a second-class option for non-achievers and (very importantly) that the study of heritage craft should not be highjacked or manipulated for politico-cultural reasons.

A common accusation against Indians is that we have a greater ability to visualise dreams than realise them. So we felt it important to develop a range of recommendations that were practical, specific and accessible, backed by personal experience, data and guidelines – building on the strengths rather than weaknesses of the system.

We were conscious of being the voice of a sector of over ten million practitioners with a geographic spread across the entire country, and which covers a huge gamut of widely differing work structures and cultures, employing widely differing techniques and technologies, using materials that range from clay to precious metal. It is the largest sector of employment after agriculture, and one of the largest contributors to the economy, in export revenues as well as domestic sales.

In addition, craft can be used as a means of interpreting many social issues and ways of life. Craft in India is so universally prevalent that it has over the centuries been used as a metaphor for numerous philosophic, metaphysical and social concepts. Many words, forms of measurement, colours and materials have a craft origin. The taana and baana of life is something all of us are familiar with, yet take for granted. Caste, gender, religion, and social practice all play significant, varying roles. All these differing criteria need to be kept in consideration when we strategize. There is no generic answer – all we could attempt to do is create an understanding of the diversity and complexity of the sector, as we posed the question: Can exclusion be transformed into awareness? The contention of our group was that it can, and craft, both practice and theory, can become a powerful tool of emotional, economic and intellectual empowerment for children at all levels, locations and sectors of school and society.

Phrases like craft and heritage carry a lot of baggage with them. In the Indian context, they are especially emotive. To metro trendy young yuppies, they carry connotations that are boring, passé and irrelevant; to others they carry all the echoes of a 5,000 year old civilization with rich multiple cultures and traditions that each of us claims ownership to and wants never to change. Some want the heritage clock to stop short at pre-Mughal India; few recognise that craft never was and never should be static.

Contemporary Indians get terribly excited when an Indian enters space, wins a beauty contest, or gets a silver medal at the Olympics. Sania Mirza entering the tennis top 100 has us agog. But few appreciate our unique distinction of having literally millions of existing master craftspeople, practising skills that are no longer extant in the rest of the world.

Paradoxically, while craft traditions are a unique mechanism for rural artisans entering the economic mainstream for the first time, they also carry the stigma of inferiority and backwardness as India enters a period of hi-tech industrialization and globalization. Craft and the ancillary aspects of design and tradition are considered by activists and economists, bureaucrats and business strategists, as peripheral and elitist. Craftspeople are always seen as picturesque exhibits of our past, rather than dynamic entrepreneurs of our present and future. We forget that one out of every 200 Indians is an artisan.

Hand craft is a production process and a wonderful indigenous technology, not an outmoded tradition. The raw materials (cane, cotton, clay, wood, wool, silk, minerals) are not only indigenously available but environmentally friendly. The existence of unique living craft skills, techniques, designs and products is India’s great strength, not weakness. This point needs to be emphasized in the school curriculum, and craft taught as a professional expertise rather than a ‘hobby’.

One of the areas we focused on was a specialized stream of education for crafts pockets where the bulk of the community are craftspeople. In India, the decision is often between a craftsman’s child learning ancestral skills (while on the job, and contributing to the family income in the process) while remaining academically illiterate or getting a conventional education. Given the poor levels of rural and state-provided education, formal schooling might not actually equip him for any job in the future.

Archana Kumari comes from a small village in one of the poorest and most deprived areas of India – Muzaffarpur district in North Bihar. At age 14, she left school, earning a pittance doing the traditional sujni embroidery of the area. At age 17 her creative skills came to the notice of a local non-government organization, ADITHI and a Canadian textile expert, Skye Morisson who together sent her to NIFT, the National Institute of Fashion Technology on a scholarship. Despite being handicapped by her lack of English and other academic skills, Archana regularly topped her class in NIFT, won a prize for the Best Design Collection of the year, and has been accepted at NIFT for further studies on her own merit. She says her hand skills and experience of working hands-on in craft have given her an edge over the other students. Her regret is that the local school did not give her and other children the early grounding that would have empowered them to be both craftswomen and entrepreneurs.

As Cyrus Vakil, who headed one of the other NCERT subcommittees, rightly said: ‘Education is the primary means of economic mobility today.’

Craft skills should be on par with other vocational training, especially in traditional crafts pockets, part of a properly structured curriculum, with trainers or parents paid to impart the skill, rather than use children as unpaid labour. Equally important is the issue of providing facilities for conventional education alongside those teaching traditional skills; scheduling semesters and hours according to the work structures and seasonality of craft production. Most young craftspeople do not attend school because school hours and location make it impossible to avail of both disciplines. Much of craft production is usually a seasonal affair, with peaks and lows according to market demands. School terms and curricula could be organized accordingly.

In areas where craft is the primary activity, children should be able to opt for craft as a course option, offered as a specialized stream in itself, learning ancillary skills like product design, book keeping, display, merchandising and entrepreneurial skills. For example, in a handloom weaving area, the course skills that should be taught include entrepreneurship, money management, communication, textile design, draughtsmanship, scale drawing, history of the craft, and technical skills. The young craftspeople should also have exposure to other weaving styles, and the different yarns, counts, looms, as well as interaction with other designers, artists and craftspeople.

To those of us now looking at the new millennium and seeking new directions for India, the potential of crafts and craftspeople is something younger generations should be sensitized to. Let us not lose sight of the fact that every ten years we lose ten per cent of our craftspeople.

The steps needed to prepare and include crafts-people and take them forward as skilled entrepreneurs and economic partners are something we must all introspect on and develop – creating awareness of and building on the strengths rather than weaknesses of each craft and craft community, and being sensitive to their different nuances and cultural consciousness. Economics may be the driving need, but social, cultural and familial concerns must also shape the direction and decision-making process. We need to take the craftspeople with us. Learning to listen as well as speak is something we all need to learn. There must be a shift from patronage to partnership.

‘I should be paid more, because I was thinking and doing,’ one Kalaraksha craftswoman from Kutch succinctly said!

There has, rightly, been an outcry and proposed legislation against the exploitative practice of child labour. However, in the craft sector with family trades, the age old system of apprenticeship, properly regulated, could be developed as an alternative education rather than exploitation. A blanket ban on children learning craft would lose out on a unique opportunity to create a skilled workforce of potential high earners and self-employment, in a country with rising unemployment and few employment avenues for rural youth, especially home-based women. But let me also stress that in my view any child under fifteen who is not at school is child labour.

Sadly, in the craft sector in India, the choice is often between a craftsman’s child learning ancestral skills (while on the job, and contributing to the family income in the process) while remaining academically illiterate or at best getting a conventional education. Given the very poor levels of rural and state-provided education, such schooling might not actually equip him for any job in the future. In Ranthambhore, the village school teacher would report on duty to sign his daily attendance, and then go off to the forest as a tourist guide!

For me, this is the crucial issue. Not poverty, which is often cited as a justification for child labour, but whether there are alternative educational opportunities for a child which would give him/her the same employment avenues? Can child labour be transformed – through legislation and through innovative new planning and educational mechanisms – into a vibrant new form of training and empowerment? In particular home-based traditional industries, and those relating to women.

Training in craft skills, whether at home, or through the traditional guru-shishya parampara, should be recognized as industrial training, and given the same support as other technical and vocational education. The family, master craftsperson, cooperative society, institution or NGO imparting the training should receive some stipend so that the child rather than the employer receives any money (s)he may earn in the process. Otherwise, there is the temptation, often succumbed to, of making the children bonded labour under the guise of imparting a skill – as has happened in the brass industry in UP and Andhra Pradesh, where craft has moved from a family occupation to an assembly-line mass manufacture. The carpet industry is another notorious example, though international pressure and legislation have forced some changes. The Rugmark Smiling Carpet example, though not perfect in either concept or application, could be a module for developing further strategies.

In a country as diverse and multidimensional as India, there is no one single solution, or methodology. Working as part of the NCERT Focus Group we all agreed that:

* The inclusion of Heritage Crafts as a focus area in the National Curriculum Review for the first time was a significant though belated recognition of the importance of the sector.

* This presented an unique opportunity to review and impact on the education system in India today.

* The challenge is not only to develop an innovative, meaningful programme, but ensure its implementation.

* Therefore the recommendations need to be accessible and adaptable to the situation and resources (human and fiscal) of the government schools.

* Recommendations need to address the concerns of both parents and children, if they are to be accepted.

* In a market-driven society, unless parents are convinced that the curriculum enhances the professional development of the child, they will not extend support.

* The universal disillusionment and discontent, at every level, with the current educational system presents both a challenge and an opportunity for change.

Specifically as regards craft:

* That Indian craft and its millions of practising craftspeople are a huge and important resource of traditional knowledge and indigenous technologies.

* That this resource could be used to value-add to the educational system in a number of ways.

* That craft should be taught both as a vocational, creative activity and as a theoretical social science.

* That craft should not only be taught as a separate subject in its own right, but integrated into the study of history, social and environmental studies, geography, arts and economics, since it is an integral part of Indian culture, aesthetics and the economy.

* That craft is particularly suited to value-add to projects of all kinds – as an illustrative teaching aid, and as a learning device.

* That experiencing and working hands-on with a craft medium can lead to learning that is useful and enriching, whatever the discipline or profession a child may eventually choose. Working with ones hands, materials and techniques helps in both understanding processes and in problem solving.

* In IITs and technical institutions abroad, model making and origami are used to teach the fundamental of engineering, mathematics, and physics.

* That craftspeople themselves should be used as trainers and teachers, rather than training another cadre of crafts teachers.

* That craft is taught as a lively, experiential exercise, and not as a revivalist lip-service to the past.

* That craft is best taught as a project, rather than a classroom exercise.

* Crafts projects and interactions can be a means of linking rural and urban youth.

* Craftspeople used as resource persons or trainers should receive the same remuneration and status as other trained professionals.

* That different curricula can be developed for schools in rural craft pockets where craft education could enhance existing craft vocations (entrepreneurship, technical training, language skills, accountancy, marketing, packaging) and for schools in urban belts, where education in craft would constitute an alternative experience and a creative outlet.

* That aspects like gender, environment, community and caste could not be left out of the teaching of craft.

‘My son’s friends laugh at him because he helps his mother,’ expostulated Rinjani, an embroidery crafts-woman, from Indonesia Dastkar at the Dastkar Threadlines Workshop in 1998.

Craft and gender have significant linkages. On one hand, craft is a microcosm of male-female roles within the family and society – men and women work together in the different processes of the craft – women knead the clay, men turn it on the wheel; women spin the yarn men weave; women embroider the leather juthis, men cut and stitch. Mostly, this is an unpaid add-on to the multiple roles a woman already juggles within the home.

On the other hand, women have increasingly taken on many craft activities formerly practised by men who have left the sector, becoming empowered entrepreneurs in the process. Chikan embroidery in Lucknow, for instance, is now almost wholly done by women rather than men, as is block printing in many parts of Rajasthan. Over the last two decades craft has become an increasingly successful source of earning and employment for otherwise unskilled, home-based women. This in turn has been a catalyst for many other forms of social empowerment. An awareness of these issues and opportunities should be built into the theoretical understanding of craft as students enter the senior classes.

A terracotta craftsperson from Tamilnadu reminded us that ‘waste is a modern concept.’ While a traditional perfume maker from Sawai Madhopur commented sadly, ‘The lake where I used to get khus for my ittar perfumes is now the site of a gas factory.’

Craft is one of the few professions which is a direct result of the natural environment in which it is practised. The existence of the surrounding natural materials – wood, metal, clay, cotton, cane and bamboo, silk, lac – is the impetus for most traditional crafts. This harmonious balance between man and nature, economic growth and environmental balance, not requiring huge inputs of artificial energy, infrastructure or investment, is what makes craft viable even today.

In a world increasingly dependent on resources that come from outside, craft has many lessons. However, it should be taught with a warning that most of these natural raw material sources are rapidly being depleted. Forests are being cut and not replanted, water polluted, many grasses and reeds are no longer available, and Andhra’s famed cotton fields are being converted to tobacco growing.

Issues that need to be debated in the classroom are the ban on ivory, sandalwood and shahtoosh, and how protection of wildlife and diminishing natural resources impact on livelihoods. Therefore, there is a corresponding need for innovative R&D that would find alternative solutions and materials. The craft sector should be seen as a vibrant opportunity for creating ancillary careers and research projects of numerous kinds, rather than one producing only village level artisans.

Being part of the curriculum review process, looking at craft as education as well as economics, was an enriching as also challenging process. Revising textbooks and introducing new classroom curricula is a cosmetic exercise unless attitudes and mindsets can be changed alongside. Respect for the craftsperson and for art of craftsmanship is the central pillar of our recommendations.

Allied to this is a consciousness that the continuing existence of an extraordinary richness of craft traditions and producers is one of India’s unique assets as it searches for its own identity in a world that is increasingly uniform and technological.

At last year’s National Master Craftsperson Award Ceremony, there was a new wave of young craftspeople who were honoured – Shantabai, Chandrabhushan, Chaman Vankar, Irfan Abdullah, among others – each from a very different region and background, practising very different hand crafts. What binds them is not just their youth and talent, but a confidence that education, allied to traditional knowledge and skill-sets, can give them a unique vantage point in the Indian and international marketplace. We should give them the tools, recognition and space to succeed.

LAILA TYABJI

 

* My thanks to the Heritage Crafts Focus Group partners for their insights and support: Mandira Kumar – Founder-Director of Sutradhar; Navjot Altaf – artist; Dr Jyotindra Jain – Founder Director, Visual Arts Centre, JNU; Subha De – artist, educationist; Dashrath Patel – artist; O.P.Sharma – art and craft instructor; National Bal Bhavan; Sudarshan Khanna – design educator, NID; Pulak Dutta – Department of Graphic Arts, Kala Bhavan, Shantiniketan; S.K.Sinha – KVIC; Shubhashish Banerjee – Director, CCRT.

** Special thanks to Dastkar for help in planning this issue.