Every winter, India’s cities witness a quiet, unsettling ritual. A Kashmiri shawlwalla rings a doorbell, opens his bag on a stranger’s sofa or compound, recites the language of heritage, and waits – half salesman, half supplicant. This is not an enterprise. This is state government policy failure. Kashmir’s shawls did not lose their market. The state lost its will to build one.
- No Dedicated Marketing Authority – Only Administrative Scatter
There is no single empowered body whose sole mandate is to sell Kashmiri shawls.
Marketing responsibility is scattered across:
- Handicrafts Directorates
- Industries & Commerce
- Corporations that barely trade
Everyone “supports.” No one is accountable for sales. Not even this, previous, or any other successive governments. In this vacuum, the artisan himself becomes the final marketing mechanism – poorly equipped, uninsured, and disposable.
When the State does not knock on markets, the artisan knocks on doors.
- No Permanent Kashmir Shawl Houses in Indian Cities
Despite decades of rhetoric, Kashmir has no permanent, state-run shawl houses in India’s major cities.
Instead, there are:
- Temporary exhibitions
- Seasonal stalls
- Event-based visibility
Luxury crafts demand permanence, predictability, and prestige. A shawl woven over six months cannot survive on a ten-day mela or a door-to-door shoutout.
- No Assured Procurement, No Floor Price
There is:
- No assured procurement
- No minimum support or floor price
- No safety net against distress selling
As a result:
- Middlemen dictate prices
- Credit replaces cash
- Artisans sell below cost
Door-to-door selling is not choice. It is economic compulsion born of price anarchy. And when something like Uttarakhand incident takes place, we have a chief minister who shouts out to another chief minister to ensure safety of our people – not because he cares but because he is to appearing pleasing to the artisan fraternity. This is not leadership; this is governance bankruptcy.
- GI Tag Without a Market Is a Paper Trophy
Yes, Kashmir Pashmina enjoys GI protection. Fair enough.
But there is:
- No GI-exclusive marketplace
- No national consumer campaign
- No strict enforcement against counterfeits
- No GI-linked procurement
GI today protects identity, not income. The authentic weaver stays poor while fake “Kashmir-type” shawls flood malls.
- Digital Marketplaces That Abandon the Artisan Halfway
Government portals exist – on paper.
But the artisan is expected to:
- Photograph products professionally
- Price strategically
- Package, ship, insure
- Handle returns and complaints
A man who weaves fourteen hours a day is now told to become a logistics company. Predictably, most fall off. The digital bridge exists – but without guardrails.
- Marketing Officers Who Don’t Market
District offices are full of officers. But none whose careers depend on:
- Artisan income growth
- Sales volume
- Markets opened
Files move. Tours happen. Reports get written. Shawls remain unsold. In any functioning economy, a marketing officer who does not market would not survive probation.
- Exhibitions That Don’t Convert into Orders
Exhibitions have become ritual theatre. There are:
- No pre-identified bulk buyers
- No retail chain contracts
- No export commitments
Artisans return home exhausted, poorer, and unsold – while departments circulate photographs as proof of success. An exhibition without contracts is organized futility.
- Normalisation of Hawking as Policy
Perhaps the most damning failure: The state has quietly normalised door-to-door selling. Travel is facilitated. Distress migration is rebranded as “market exploration.” Hawking is called entrepreneurship. When shawlwallas leave Kashmir every winter, it is not mobility – it is policy failure on foot.
- The State Exports Risk, Keeps Comfort
In this system, all risk is pushed downward:
- Unsold stock → artisan
- Fraud, theft, non-payment → artisan
- Travel and lodging → artisan
- Legal trouble in other states → artisan
What does the State keep?
- Offices
- Salaries
- Seminars
- Comfort
This is not governance. This is risk outsourcing to the weakest citizen.
- The Silent Criminalisation of Dignity
Door-to-door selling places artisans in constant legal vulnerability:
- Accused of illegal hawking
- Detained or questioned by police
- Harassed by RWAs
- Viewed with suspicion as outsiders
A fake machine-made shawl in a mall enjoys more legitimacy than a real Kashmiri shawl on a doorstep. This is humiliation by policy omission.
- Trader Protection, Weaver Exposure
The truth few say aloud:
- Big traders get access
- Exporters get incentives
- Showrooms get concessions
The weaver gets:
- Registration cards
- Identity numbers
- Sympathy
Profit travels upward. Uncertainty falls downward. This is not market failure. It is designed imbalance.
- A Craft That Cannot Feed Its Children Will Die
No young Kashmiri wants to inherit:
- A loom that guarantees debt
- A craft that demands migration
- A profession that offers humiliation instead of pride
The signs are already visible:
- Silent looms
- Broken skill chains
- Crafts becoming museum artefacts
When the state refuses to make a craft economically viable, it becomes complicit in its extinction.
- This Is How Cultures Are Erased – Quietly
No announcement will mark the death of Kashmiri shawl culture.
It will vanish through:
- One artisan quitting
- One son refusing to learn
- One winter migration too many
- One unsold pile left at home
Years later, the same system will commission a report titled “Revival of a Lost Craft.”
Need to Merge Departments by Function and Measure by Sales
The crisis of Kashmiri shawlwallas is sustained not by absence of departments, but by overabundance without purpose. The Handicrafts & Handloom Department, the Industries & Commerce Department, and the Handicrafts (Sales & Export) Corporation today operate in overlapping silos where everyone exists, but no one sells.
Craft Development bodies design, Directorates register, Corporations limp along with token retail, while export promotion sits elsewhere – fragmented authority producing collective irresponsibility. At least one entity – the Sales & Export Corporation in its current form – has become functionally redundant, surviving on legacy rather than outcomes.
What is required is not cosmetic reform but structural surgery: merge all shawl-related marketing, retail, export facilitation, and GI enforcement into a single, autonomous Kashmir Shawl Marketing Authority (KSMA) with professional leadership and revenue-linked accountability; reorient the Handicrafts Department to production, skills, and certification; and strip non-selling bodies of marketing mandates. Until departments are merged by function and measured by sales, the system will continue to protect offices while exposing artisans – and redundancy will keep masquerading as governance.
