The Death of the Artisan: How Governance Unintentionally Erased India’s Living Craft
- Madhukar Dama
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
For thousands of years, India was a land where skills lived in the fingers.
Every street, every caste, every village had its own art — not as luxury, but as daily life.
The potter who made the water cool.
The weaver who wrapped dignity on the loom.
The cobbler, the blacksmith, the toy-maker, the broom-weaver, the oil-presser.
There was no word for “unskilled” — everyone was a custodian of something useful.
But in the last hundred years, and especially after Independence, these hands were slowly replaced by machines, and craftsmanship was replaced by contracts.
No single government set out to destroy the artisan.
But governance — any governance — comes with side-effects.
In the name of upliftment, it often unknowingly uproots.
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WHEN AID KILLS SELF-RELIANCE
Government aid schemes meant to help the poor rarely strengthened traditional skills.
Instead of refining the blacksmith’s furnace or improving the weaver’s tools, the aid came in forms the artisan could never use:
Application forms in English
Bank loans with collateral
Subsidies only for machines
Skill development that erased old skills and taught generic jobs
The logic was: bring them into the “mainstream.”
But the stream they were already in was rich, regenerative, and dignified.
They didn’t need rescue.
They needed respect.
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EDUCATION AND THE DREAM OF ESCAPE
For generations, artisan families passed down knowledge through doing.
Children learned to dye, to carve, to embroider, to stitch — not from textbooks, but from the smell of their father's workshop or the rhythm of their mother’s loom.
But modern schooling came with a clear message:
“This work is backward. Escape it.”
Success was redefined.
No longer was it the boy who spun thread with care — it was the boy who got an IT job.
No longer was it the girl who made herbal kajal — it was the girl who spoke English.
And so, the young left.
Left the village, the workbench, the tradition.
They entered crowded cities, took up data entry jobs, and lost the wisdom of their own hands.
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SUBSIDIES FOR FACTORIES, SILENCE FOR FAMILIES
Governments, eager to industrialize, gave lands, loans, and tax benefits to large-scale manufacturers.
Machines could produce faster. Cheaper.
A plastic basket replaced the reed one.
A factory blanket replaced the handloom.
A steel ladle replaced the handmade bronze.
But with every machine introduced, a pair of hands lost meaning.
The factory got power.
The artisan lost identity.
And once those skills are lost — they are nearly impossible to recover.
Because a loom can be bought again.
But the laya — the rhythm in the fingers — that is passed through generations.
When it breaks, it’s gone.
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DAILY UTILITY WAS ALSO ART
This was not just about “art and craft.”
This was about life.
A woman’s broom was tied with local grass — not bought from a mall.
A clay pot cooled water better than any branded bottle.
A wooden grinding stone sang a rhythm the child grew up with.
But these were slowly declared obsolete.
Unhygienic. Inefficient. Low status.
And so, every home filled with stainless steel, plastic, imported non-stick, mixer grinders —
And the soul of the home silently shrank.
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WHAT WE LOST
Skills that survived without electricity
Tools designed for beauty and function
Communities bound by shared rhythms
Children who grew up with purpose, not just pressure
And elders whose knowledge was still relevant
We didn’t just lose crafts.
We lost self-reliance.
And now, in every city, you’ll find former artisans driving auto rickshaws, doing deliveries, or sitting unemployed — holding skills that no one asked for anymore.
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CAN IT BE HEALED?
Yes — but not by nostalgia.
And not by one festival of handicrafts in a five-star hotel.
It will take:
Policy that funds preservation, not replacement
Education that respects the hand as much as the head
Markets that give value to slow work, not just cheap bulk
And families that stop laughing at the boy who wants to be a potter
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CONCLUSION: NOT AN ACCUSATION — A REFLECTION
This is not an attack on governments.
This is a mirror to what any system can do when it measures growth by GDP, not dignity.
By consumption, not connection.
The artisan is not extinct.
She still exists — maybe in your own village, or at the edge of a city slum.
What she needs is not charity.
She needs you to believe her skill is still worth something.
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the weaver’s ghost
— after charles bukowski
they gave him a form
a bank loan
a certificate of poverty
and told him —
“leave the loom,
go learn Excel.”
he used to sit cross-legged
under a neem tree,
pulling threads
like breath.
his cloth smelled of sun,
his fingers remembered stories
the textbooks never knew.
now he stands in line
for a factory pass,
wiping oil off machines
that hiss louder than silence.
the cobbler’s shop
is a liquor stall.
the broom-maker’s daughter
sells shampoo sachets
from a plastic chair.
the potter’s wheel
hasn’t turned since the panchayat
got a mixer grinder.
progress came
with fluorescent lights
and a flat tone.
craft died
like an old man
no one visited.
and the gods,
once fed from bronze lamps
and leaf plates,
now look out
from laminated calendars
in courier offices
and call centers.
it wasn’t murder.
it was policy.
they didn’t stab him.
they gave him
options.