Strengthening artisan clusters across India

New Dehi, Aug 10 As a young girl, Assam's artisan entrepreneur Nabanita Kalita saw her mother, grandmother and aunts spend hours on the handloom weaving beautiful Mekhela Chador and Ghamosas and other textiles for the family. Years later, taking an entrepreneurial turn, Kalita's passion and knowledge of traditional handloom fuels her textile venture - one among many in the region's craft ecosystem.

"In Assam, weaving is part of our tradition which gets passed on from the mothers to their daughters. The rhythmic movement of a loom with my mother's soft humming while weaving, was a sight that I fondly remember. Today, my mother overlooks when I weave products on the loom. It gives me immense pride that I have been passed on this skill," Kalita, who is based in Assam's handloom cluster Kamrup, told life.

Not many, however, are like Kalita. A growing reluctance among artisanal communities to carry forward a generational craft, has thinned out existing practitioners for handloom and handicrafts. For her, what helped what Antaran, a key intervention of the Tata Trusts' craft-based livelihood programme.

It is a direct implementation five-year programme of Tata Trusts that was initiated to bring seminal changes in craft development and aims at rejuvenating ailing handloom clusters through an end-to-end programme that helps and educates artisans/weavers. It was initiated in regions that were economically vulnerable, where agriculture is not a viable source of income, instead there is a prevalence of a weaving culture. Community initiatives are currently across four states and six handloom clusters in - Assam

( With inputs from IANS )