DHARMAPURI: Artisans involved in making Golu dolls in Dharmapuri suffered losses this year due to several issues, including lack of demand and erratic climatic conditions. With the onset of Navaratri from Saturday, over 20 artisan families (over 150 people) from Adhiyamankottai have manufactured hundreds of Golu dolls from the past several months. But due to several reasons, including lack of demand, poor soil quality and bad climatic conditions caused, they are facing losses, they said.
R Guna, an artisan involved in making pottery and Golu dolls told TNIE, “For the past five years, our production has reduced. A total of 20 families manufacture thousands of Golu dolls every year, but this year, we didn’t make these dolls due to a lack of demand. Our market is primarily in Karnataka, especially in Bengaluru and Mysuru and we start getting orders weeks before Navratri. But this year we only had a handful of buyers.”
Another artisan K Gayathri said, “We have various varieties of dolls with prices ranging from Rs 20 to Rs 2,000. But the prices do not fetch us much profit.” On the other hand, wholesale traders buy the dolls for half the market value at around our production cost, due to which we suffer losses,” he added.
R Kumar, another artisan said, “This year, rains have been incessant and we are not able to dry our produce effectively in the furnace. Moreover, we are having issues protecting our clay from being washed away by the rains. So, we had to invest more on clay this year. Further, with an increase in online shopping, cottage industries are severely affected.”