A PARADIGM SHIFT IN THE CARPET CRAFT BY SKILL UPGRADATION AND CAPACITY BUILDING TRAINING PROGRAMMES WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE STATE OF

The Handicraft Industry, particularly the Carpet Craft Cluster is struggling for its progressive and prosperous existence.It is impacted by a lot of constraints including but not limited to identifying the cluster strengths, weaknesses, socio-economic environment. It also requires feasible steps to be taken for the overall sustainable growth of the cluster. The famous Handicraft industry including Carpet industry of Kashmir is a crucial economic contributor to the state of Jammu and Kashmir and provides livelihood to roughly 3.74 lakh people. However, in current times the industry is facing a lot of challenges due to the intervention of modern machinery and also increased competition from various countries. Carpet Weaving is a significant activity in the handicraft family of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. This activity provides employment to a large chunk of population and substantially contributes to the exports of the state. In view of the insufficient economic returns from the trade in the past, this craft decayed and declined as master craftsmen of this activity were loath to pass on their skill and expertise to their children. The Government of Jammu and Kashmir intervened by incorporating skill up gradation and capacity building training programmes at Government level to interested persons so that the manpower could be increased and thus maintain a right balance between demand and supply. The developmental approach has been adopted as a key strategy with the purpose of increasing the productivity, competitiveness as well as capacity of trainees. Major objectives of the study are to collect the information about the impact of such training programmes and assess the level of improvement in trainees after undergoing this training programme.