Weak dollar means job losses, bleak future for India’s artisans

Decline in exports to the US force several handicraft ops to slash workforce

MUMBAI: It’s that sinking feeling for Giridharbhai Khedia, 49. The artisan has been jobless since the first week of January and has just Rs 9,500 left to support his family of six, which includes bed-ridden parents, wife and school-going children. The money is diminishing and so is his chance of getting a new job.  

Khedia is among 84 other artisans laid off by Lalji Handicrafts of Jodhpur, which was faced with continuing decline in exports of handicraft items due to dollar depreciation. “These savings will last only for three to four months,” he says.

Similar is the plight of Devakiben Dua, 32, who is busy rolling papads in her two-room dwelling in the Kotwali area of Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh. Another victim of massive retrenchment in the handicrafts industry in the country, Dua lost her job as an artisan of brass items in mid-November; she has been self employed since then. She earns about Rs 35-40 per day, selling papads. She is just able to afford serving one square meal to her two children and her aged mother.

Like Khedia and Dua, thousands of other artisans have lost their jobs in the Rs 40, 000 crore handicraft industry in India, according to the information provided by the export promotion council for handicrafts (EPCH), Government of India.

With the attention of the country’s corporate czars focused on problems of attrition and retention in sectors like banking, financial services, information technology (IT) etc, a displeasing picture is slowly being sketched in the labour-intensive handicrafts industry, which currently employs 7 million in roughly 25,000 handicraft clusters across the country, says R K Srivastava, deputy director, EPCH. This largely unorganised sector exports items like metal ware, zari and lace goods, imitation jewelry, wooden artifacts, brass and iron goods, and is mostly concentrated in tier-II and tier-III towns of Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Rajasthan, and Haryana.

With the rupee having appreciated by 10.2% against the dollar over the past 12 months (according to data by US based financial services firm Morgan Stanley), exports in the sector have declined from $3 billion in 2006-07 to $2.5 billion in 2007-08, says Ganesh Kumar Gupta, president, federation of Indian export organization (FIEO).

Srivastava says over 2 million people working in the various handicrafts units across India will be rendered jobless by March this year and another 3 million by December 2008, if the rupee continues to appreciate further, as over 35% of the exports are to the US market.

“Each month, a unit employing some 500 employees is incurring losses of Rs 20 crore,” says Nirmal Bhandari, president, Jodhpur Handicraft Exporters Association. Furthermore, handicrafts exports from Rajasthan have declined by 40% in 2007-08 from about Rs 600 crore in the previous fiscal, according Richa Solanki, a senior executive at the Federation of Rajasthan Handicraft Exporters.

The situation in other places like Moradabad, Jaipur, Shahranpur, Ferozabad is equally deplorable. Of the 1400 units employing 10 lakh people in Moradabad, 40 have already closed down, leaving 28,000 people in the lurch. “Price of brass has increased from Rs 90 per kg to Rs 150 over the past 10 months. This, coupled with a 4% value added tax on products, is increasing costs on finished products and decreasing sales,” says Vinod Khanna, proprietor, Nodi Handicrafts, Moradabad.

Reduction in sales is another blow to the workers.

Gupta says after being rendered jobless, many artisans have managed to get jobs as handcart pullers, carpenters, saw men, waiters, tea vendors, etc. “Some in Shahranpur, Hoshiarpur, Bareilly have set up small pan-bidi shops to make a living.”

But the income they get through these means pales in comparison to the average Rs 3500 they would make each month by creating artifacts, furniture and jewelry items.

Khanna says workers who are 50-plus will find it tougher to earn money. “The younger ones get part-time jobs as rickshaw pullers, porters, food delivery boys, etc. But the older workers have far lesser choice.”

Well, now they know how nightmares replace dreams, and how fast.

g_priyanka@dnaindia.net