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ART
OF BUSINESS
Whether
one deals in Sahanpur viticulture chisels or Moradabad alloys, Indian
folk art has a ready market abroad, writes India Today's Anshul Avijit.
Indian handicrafts
always had a few figureheads: Saharanpur viticulture chisels, paisleys
on Kashmiri snuff boxes, Moradabad alloys, Mahabalipuram masonry and the
thickset marriage figures discovered in the Bihar earthquake of 1934 that
later became famous as Madhubani paintings. For long, these easily cut-and-paste
trophies of culture gave the much-needed oxygen to asphyxiated forex reserves-until,
of course, remittances from rich expats and a sudden surge in the sales
of rubber footwear and non-basmati rice, among other things, introduced
the dilemmas of overabundance. Now handicrafts form an important part
of the export boom with sales of over Rs 7,500 crores ... and rising.
But till recently, all was not well with handicrafts. Last year, the export
of the commodity nose-dived a staggering 22 per cent from 2001, which
itself was a comedown from the year before. Importers and insiders blamed
it a little on product fatigue and mostly on 9/11-a generic explanation
for any slowdown in sales of Ikea, Pottery Barn or the Central Cottage
Industries in Delhi. There was also the American and European recession
that was a concern not only for Indian exporters but the world as a whole.
Things have changed.
At the international fair organised by the Export Promotion Council for
Handicrafts (epch) in Delhi's Pragati Maidan in October last year-a biannual
event since 1994-foreign buyers swamped the stalls put up by traders and
exporters from Delhi, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Moradabad, Ferozabad and other
manufacturing clusters in northern India.
Exporters claimed that it was the most lucrative fair in the past decade
and many had orders booked for the next two years. The Centre for Monitoring
Indian Economy figures already recorded a positive growth of over 7 per
last year, which is likely to dramatically increase following the massive
success of the October fair. "It's a bonanza," says EPC executive
director Rakesh Kumar. "Those few days generated direct orders worth
Rs 1,200 crore and indirect business of double that amout."
The next fair, from February 27 to March 2 is estimated to be to be even
bigger, and now EPEC is also planning to have permanent business stalls
in Greater Noida for increased buyer-exporter interaction.Many of the
1,000-odd participants of the fair are now busy fulfiling orders. The
nerve-centre of the activity is not Delhi but Jodhpur-now the handicrafts
capital of India-a place where storehouses of big dealers, glutted with
furniture and artifacts, run several kilometres into the progressively
colonised Thar. Prince Arts, Jodhpur's No. 1 exporter, now ships an average
of 120 containers a month, each container varying between 20 ft and 45
ft in length, from its 1 sq km-big packing department. Sun City, formed
by a breakaway brother, has a target of about 100 containers and Lalji
Handicratfs easily manages about 80. It is a low margin, high volume trade
and since each exporter is looking at undercutting prices, profit per
commodity is sometimes only a few rupees. "This way each container
costs about Rs 10-15 lakh and the net profit comes to about Rs 2 lakh
for each," says Gyan Bahadur Chettri, a Delhi-based trader who gathers
goodies from the hinterlands and sells to buyers in Jodhpur. "So
it easy to figure out the amount of money they are making and the number
of orders they have got."Sunil Singhal of Lalji also says sales are
up more 30 per cent from the same time last year.
But it is not only the regular stuff-like Madhubanis and Kashmiri rococo-that
is getting cargoed. A typical wooden furniture is an important export
item and buyers from the US and Italy take the lead in dictating styles
and stipulations. Old, weathered doors, yanked from the latches of ageing
houses, are used to make almirahs and cupboards, the newer wood acid-washed
to harmonise the patina. Doors are also made into dining tables, unspoked
wheels are converted into footrests, gypsy carts become sofas, trunks
become chairs, boxes become stools and milk cans become vases. The hottest
commodities are also cd stands and floppy boxes, the kind of local innovations
that add to the growing orders. "The buyers want decorative items
to have some practical use too," says G.S. Negi of the Delhi-based
Govinda Handicrafts, who has recently established a foothold in the more
lucrative sands of Jodhpur. "So we have to mix and match, watch trends
and the kind of utility items required." Chettri says that has he
has orders of as many Nepali milk pots as he can possibly bring and the
only thing preventing him from doing that is the Maoist mayhem in the
Himalyan kingdom. Nepal is an important hinterland of goods, mainly because
it is yet unexplored and novel artefacts are now appearing with satisfying
regularity.
Glass used in handicrafts is doing well too, in particular the watermelon-shaped
lamps in burgundy, turmeric and cobalt blue. Ferozabad acts as the manufacturer
and stockist, while most of items are routed abroad through Delhi and
Jodhpur. It is a trend that when a hit item is found, maybe a vase of
a container, it tends to be replicated in all possible mediums and glass
is the initial choice. Take the wooden trays or the prat extricated from
various parts of tribal Maharashtra. A sellout in Europe for displaying
green apples and yellow bell peppers, they are now also being made in
thick glass, chiseled marble and unmixed copper. Sometimes the most humble
local material can also become export fodder. Pradeep Malhotra of the
Delhi-based India Craft is just completing an order for 20,000 pieces
of the chai ka glass with its chassis tray. "I was caught a little
by surprise but it is one of the easiest orders to fulfill," he says.
"They use it to serve both tea and wine, as one of my Spanish cu
stomers told me. Now my handicrafts business is like a general store ...
I can supply everything. " Seats hand-knitted from grass or bamboo
strips, sinfully expensive to make in the West (£70 per seat in
England), also sees brisk sales and Malhotra has shipped a couple of these
containers.
Economic analysts like Bibek Debroy, attributes the escalation to increase
in incomes abroad as well as greater likeness for subcontinental chic.
"I think branding of Indian products has been more successful. This
also results in higher unit value of realisation," says Debroy. EPCH's
Kumar says that their was also a huge backlog after 9/11 and the exporters
were ready with stocks and the buyers wanted to counter the slump.
Tom Dixon, head designer of International home store Habitat, makes frequent
trips to India and his agents say that Indian material and iconography
has become a staple of Europe partly because of an aggressive promotion
of Indian style both from here and outside. The look, resting chiefly
on a template of bristly wood and opulent fabric, is the consumption of
the season, and will probably help in increasing India's picayunish share
of $ 1.6 billion in the massive $ 116 billion market for home decoration
and gifts. And Dixon's trips are unlikely to slow down in near future.
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