For generations, Kashmir’s handicrafts have been passed from hand to hand: a carpet knotted slowly over months, a shawl embroidered stitch by stitch, a piece of papier-mâché shaped and painted with techniques refined across centuries. The survival of those traditions has depended not only on the skill of artisans, but on the willingness of each generation to inherit them.
Now the government is trying to add another inheritance to that chain — business knowledge.
The Department of Handicrafts and Handloom, Kashmir, is urging artisans and weavers to encourage their children and wards to enroll in a two-year Master of Business Administration programme in Craft Management & Entrepreneurship at the Craft Development Institute in Srinagar. The programme, affiliated with the University of Kashmir, is being positioned by the department as a bridge between Kashmir’s traditional craft economy and a generation of entrepreneurs capable of taking its products into national and international markets.
The incentive is unusually direct: the government will reimburse the entire tuition fee of the postgraduate programme for eligible students, subject to prescribed conditions.
For families whose livelihoods are tied to handicrafts, the offer is intended to make higher education in the sector less a question of abandoning the family trade and more a way of reimagining it.
The department has specifically called on artisans and weavers to encourage their wards to take up the course, arguing that Kashmir’s traditional crafts possess substantial economic and export potential but require new forms of professional expertise to realise it.
The message reflects a broader shift in how the craft sector is being discussed. For years, the preservation of handicrafts has largely been framed around safeguarding heritage — keeping techniques, motifs and artisanal knowledge alive. But heritage alone does not guarantee a livelihood. A craft can survive culturally while the business built around it weakens, as markets change, consumer preferences evolve, and younger workers seek opportunities elsewhere.
The government’s pitch is therefore built around a different proposition: that the future of Kashmir’s crafts may depend as much on management, branding, technology and entrepreneurship as it does on craftsmanship itself.
The Craft Management & Entrepreneurship Programme at CDI is designed around that intersection. According to the department, the course combines craft, design, technology, management and entrepreneurship, giving students an understanding of both the creative and commercial sides of the craft economy.
That combination is increasingly important in a market where producing a high-quality traditional object is only one part of the challenge. Finding customers, building a brand, understanding digital commerce, developing contemporary products without losing authenticity, navigating export markets and managing an enterprise can determine whether a craft business remains viable.
The department said the programme seeks to create a new generation of professionally trained craft entrepreneurs who can take Kashmir’s handicrafts and handloom traditions beyond their conventional markets.
The ambition is not simply to produce graduates who understand crafts. It is to produce entrepreneurs who can build businesses around them.
“We particularly urge the children and wards of artisans and weavers to avail this programme,” a department spokesman said, stressing the economic and export potential of traditional crafts. A professionally trained younger generation, he said, could play a decisive role in converting that heritage into sustainable enterprises, creating jobs and developing globally competitive brands.
That emphasis on the children of artisans is significant.
Kashmir’s craft traditions have historically been sustained through families and communities. Skills that are difficult to learn from books have often been transmitted through observation and practice, with younger members learning alongside older artisans. But economic pressures can make that inheritance increasingly fragile. A younger generation may see limited prospects in traditional production when compared with professions offering more predictable incomes and wider career paths.
The MBA programme offers a different route: rather than asking young people to choose between tradition and professional advancement, it attempts to make the tradition itself the foundation for a professional career.
A graduate need not necessarily become a full-time artisan. The programme’s intended possibilities are much broader — from product development and branding to marketing, enterprise management and entrepreneurship.
That could be particularly important for a sector whose products carry a strong geographical and cultural identity but often face the difficulty of translating that identity into sustained commercial value.
Kashmir’s handicrafts are already known far beyond the region. Carpets, shawls, embroidery, woodwork, papier-mâché and other traditional products have long been associated with the Valley. Yet recognition of a craft is not the same as the creation of profitable enterprises capable of scaling without diluting quality or authenticity.
The department sees professional management as one missing link.
The Craft Development Institute has, according to the department, already contributed to that transition. The institute has worked to promote professionalism, innovation and entrepreneurship, and its alumni have ventured into businesses connected with Kashmir’s traditional crafts.
Its approach brings together design, technology and management, with students exposed to areas including product development, branding, marketing and enterprise management.
That model treats a craft object not merely as a finished product, but as part of a larger economic system.
Design can determine whether a traditional product appeals to new consumers. Branding can distinguish an authentic Kashmiri product in a crowded marketplace. Technology can open new channels for production, communication, and sales. Management can determine whether a small workshop becomes a sustainable enterprise. Entrepreneurship can connect all of those elements.
The department now wants to take that process one step further.
It said it is working toward creating a “startup launch pad” for students who successfully complete the MBA programme. The objective would be to help graduates move from the classroom into viable craft enterprises, turning professional training into employment and investment in the sector.
For a region where handicrafts remain closely connected to household incomes and cultural identity, such a transition could have consequences beyond the individual graduate.
A successful craft enterprise can generate work for artisans, designers, suppliers and marketers. It can create demand for traditional skills while introducing new products and markets. And if young entrepreneurs remain connected to the sector, they may provide the bridge between older craft knowledge and newer commercial practices.
The challenge, however, is not simply to produce more businesses.
The deeper question is whether growth can occur without weakening the qualities that make Kashmir’s crafts distinctive in the first place.
For craft economies, commercialisation can be both opportunity and risk. New markets may provide income and encourage younger people to stay involved, but pressure for lower prices, faster production or mass-market designs can also undermine traditional techniques and craftsmanship.
A management education rooted in the craft sector could potentially help entrepreneurs navigate that tension – preserving the identity of a product while understanding what contemporary consumers are looking for.
That is the space the department appears to be targeting.
The fee reimbursement removes one of the most immediate barriers to entry for eligible families. Applicants seeking reimbursement will have to produce an Income Certificate issued by the competent authority to establish eligibility under the prescribed criteria.
For artisans and weavers, the department’s appeal is therefore both practical and generational: send the next generation to learn how to build enterprises around the skills and traditions already present in their families.
The policy also reflects an understanding that preserving handicrafts cannot depend entirely on subsidies or ceremonial recognition. A living craft tradition needs consumers, markets and, above all, people who can make a livelihood from it.
The department’s proposed startup support suggests that it wants the MBA to be more than an academic qualification. The intended path is from craft knowledge to management education, from management education to entrepreneurship, and from entrepreneurship to employment and market expansion.
In that sense, the programme represents a wager on a different future for Kashmir’s handicrafts.
The wager is that the children of artisans do not have to leave the craft economy to find modern careers. They can become its designers, managers, marketers, exporters and founders. They can take traditions learned within families and pair them with skills acquired in classrooms.
And they can perhaps turn what has traditionally been described as Kashmir’s cultural heritage into something more durable: a competitive economic sector capable of supporting the people who inherit it.
The department has urged eligible candidates and the wards of artisans and weavers to apply within the prescribed admission schedule.
The message is straightforward. Kashmir’s crafts have survived because people learned how to make them.
The government now wants a new generation to learn how to build businesses around them.
About the Author
Bilquees Punjabi holds a Master’s in Computer Applications and explores the evolving relationship between technology, digital media, audiences, and journalism.
