Click to play videoKolhapur: Kholapur is situated just across the border from Karnataka, into Maharashtra. Here, if the famous Kolhapuri slippers don't win you over, the food certainly will.
But in the footwear market there's something amiss. There are fewer authentic Kolhapuri designs and more designs from Rajasthan and Gujarat. Most of the authentic workshops in Kolhapur have shut down.
Says a workshop owner, Sandeep Kumar, "Raw materials are more expensive by almost 50 per cent, and the best leather is being exported."
Kolhapuri chappals (slippers) have no patent protection, so the markets are flooded with cheap imitations made in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, where craftsmen use plywood instead of leather.
Customers in big cities don't know the difference, so they buy cheap imitations. Workshops earn a margin of Rs 20 per pair, which is divided amongst the craftsmen who work there. With falling demand, the craft might soon die out.
Almost 20 per cent of the workshops in most neighbourhoods have shut down and the craftsmen left might just be Kholapur's last generation for craftsmen.
Says a craftsman named Shankar, "We have been doing this for generations but we don't earn enough anymore. Our children won't do the same work."
10 years ago, the state government allocated Rs 2.5 crore to set up a Leather Development Corp of Maharashtra to help market and export these products. But it seems the initiative has not been able to push them too far.
Says Manager, Leather Development Corp Of Maharashtra, Vivek Shankar Chouhan, "These products are not being exported because there's no demand for them. That's why there's no work happening."
All the people of Kolhapur can hope for now is that the government will move soon to save their craft.
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