Training for Artisans: Blending the Market-led Approach with Tradition, Sustainability and Environmental Issues - John Ballyn's Response to Poonam Bir Kasturi's "Transforming the 'Guru-Sishya' Parampara"

Poonam Bir Kasturi's article, "Transforming the 'guru-shishya' parampara" - changing the way training is planned for the craft sector", is both timely as well as a responsible consideration of the challenges faced by artisans, not just in India, but in developed and developing countries alike. Speak with craftsmen and women in UK, you will find them speaking about the same problems of survival in their chosen skill. The essential difference is that an artisan in a G8 country has more possibilities of diversifying out of poverty through taking up a different career. If that also fails, then G8 social service provisions enable people to survive while they pick themselves up and start over again. Her description of the confusion facing artisans confronted by the demands of export markets they have never seen is the same as the confusion felt by producer groups working in Assam, when asked to develop products for a Keralan market. But in UK too we have artisans who have no idea how the market functions; who produce designs that nobody wants, and wonder why they do not survive. There are artisans in Europe making craft as art form, without relevant purpose, or more obtusely, deliberately making products that fail to function - craft as ironic statement. There is a saying in Zambia which has relevance. "If no one wants it, why make it?" It is about process by which one arrives at product, not product as gimmick.