Artificial Jewellery Market: lives of Artisans

With the support of the R&D Division O/O Development Commissioner Handicrafts, Ministry of Textiles, Government of India, MIEF conducted a very interesting piece of research in Delhi and Jaipur in the artificial jewellery market supply chain. MIEF researchers interviewed and met with over 500 artisans in Delhi and Jaipur (in 2011/12) and the purpose was to ascertain their health conditions and potential occupational hazards they were faced with and also to recommend the changes. This is a big project and we have many new details we would like to share with you in the imitation jewellery artisans’ life, so today, we begin by sharing details on Jaipur. We will follow this up with the artificial jewellery artisans’ life in Delhi.

What is special about artificial jewellery?

First a small input into the artificial jewellery or imitation jewellery or costume jewellery market as such is that the market is extremely fast moving (fast fashion) and hence requires a continuous process of innovations and design in the products. The consumer demands are fluctuating and this puts a lot of pressure on the artisans at the end of the supply chain to produce faster, cheaper and in line with changing tastes. These imitation jewellery artisans are often at the lower end of the supply chain and sometimes work with outdated designs with no realised gains since these are already exhausted in the market, and this puts them in further pressure and restricts their entry into the high margin products.

How MIEF conducted research?

MIEF worked with a set questionnaire that was developed for consistency and comparison purposes in the analysis phase for both Delhi & Jaipur. We were able to reach the artists through desk research, Department of Handicrafts and also by physically visiting the markets where artificial jewellery was being sold. In both Delhi & Jaipur it was tough to sometimes interview artisans who were reluctant to share data on product and income levels and also didn’t want to talk to ‘government’ related people.

Artisans in Jaipur

In Jaipur we interviewed 264 artisans. We took help of local inhabitants of Jaipur and went to suggested areas including Johri Bazaar, Chaura Rasta, Tripolia Bazaar, Kishanpur Bazaar, Choti Chaupad, Bhatta Gali, Badi Chaupad, Nahargadh Road, Maniharo ka Rasta and Vidyadhar Nagar to meet up with imitation jewellery artisans. In the semiprecious industry artisans were working mainly for big jewelers or were employed by exporters. In bangle making and artifacts- we did encounter some who were self-employed and doing good business. Most interviewees as we said before were suspicious of MIEF researchers as they did not want to give information to “the government”. Artisans were living in joint families and often the whole family was involved in the artificial jewellery production, including women. Our research did not include children. Most artisans were unaware of the various government financial schemes or ‘artisan cards’ and help they could avail of, even though 40% artisans had high school education.

The main health and occupational hazards stemmed from the fact that most of them had incomes per month in the Rs. 10,000 range (and this typically involved the whole family) and also had very long hours at work. Artisan quarters were often ill kept and work-desks were not clean.

We will continue this series with recommendations and comparisons with Artisan lives in Delhi too! Keep watching this space.