Reviving Indigenous Wool Craft of India

Issue #10, 2023                                                                              ISSN: 2581- 9410 Introduction Millions of pastoralists graze India’s forests, wastelands, grasslands and farm fallows. Some estimates place the number of pastoralists in India at 10-12 million; others as high as 34 million. They are a familiar sight by the roadside, as they migrate seasonally over hundreds of kilometers, across diverse terrains of the Indian subcontinent. The Himalayas, coasts, arid and semi-arid desert ecosystems and tropical forests, have, for centuries, cradled a variety of pastoral systems which essentially flourish in conditions that are sub optimal for agriculture.  Across these varied ecologies, a vast genetic resource of sheep, yak, goats and camels have been conserved and bred by several pastoral communities of the country who manage a bulk of India’s 74 million sheep, 400 thousand camels, and close to half of its 135 million goats. It is not surprising then, that India is home to a unique wool culture, craft and economy which has got severely ruptured in today’s globalized world,  but bides its time and awaits the possibilities of a revival. India, in fact, has the second largest population of sheep in the world, rambling across the alpine shrubs and meadows of the Himalayas, the vast arid plains of Western India, as well as the farms, forests and grasslands of the Deccan (South).  This impressive army of sheep is one of the tireless cogs of our economy; they fertilize vast tracts of rain fed farmlands w...