NEW DELHI: With the constant rise in demand of traditional and tribal handicraft products, India has become one of the largest handicraft exporting countries. A senior official of the tribal ministry said that tribal handicraft products are more in demand now than ever due to their aesthetics and environment-friendly’ nature. In May 2022 alone, the total handcraft export from India had touched $ 120.06 million, which was around 1.01% increase from April 2022 this year.
“During 2021-22, the total exports of Indian handicrafts were valued at $ 4.35 billion, which was 25.7% increase from the previous year,” said a senior official. Among other handicrafts, India’s shawls, painting, wooden items, earthen pots, bags, traditional jewellery, baskets and other handmade woodenware are gaining larger place across overseas markets, including in the US. According to an official data, the initiative that started to make tribal products global has started yielding encouraging results not only in overseas markets, but also within the country.
“Within the country, the marketing of tribal and traditional handicraft products is done through wider networks of 140 Trifed (Tribal Co-operatives Marketing Development Federation of India) outlets. This initiative has also generated employments for 10.5 lakh artisans in the last 6 years. And notably, a half of them (benefited with employments) are women artisans”, said an official data, adding further that handcrafts and handlooms have established India’s identity in the global markets.
According to Export Promotion Council for Handcrafts, India’s traditional jewellery, embroidery, hand printed textiles, wood wares art metal wares and agarbati and attars –produced by India’s traditional and tribal communities, have also started gaining demand overseas as well as country’s markets. As per avaibale data, India is home to over 3, 000 handicrafts and other traditional crafts forms such as ‘papier-mache’ of Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh’s ‘ thangka- paintings’, Bihar’s Madhubani paintings, Punjab’s ‘Phulkari and bagh textiles, Haryana’s ‘brassware’ and UP’s ‘Zardosi work’.