History

The idea for forming an apex body for the craft industry emerged out of various discussions between some of the current members of AIACA's board, especially William Bissell, the Managing Director of FabIndia and Laila Tyabji, the Chairperson of Dastkar.

While there were many individuals and organizations in the sector engaging with the government on various issues like the need to reform unclear policies, tax regulations with respect to starting and running a crafts-based business, lack of access to credit and social security services for craftworkers and various other issues, there was no impact due to the isolated nature of these attempts. The crafts sector is the second largest employer in the country after agriculture, yet the government gave it a low priority vis-à-vis other sectors in policy-making due to their unorganized nature and the fact that most craftworkers operated in the informal sector. The rapidly changing economic scenario within India was creating new threats and opportunities for the sector and these developments required pro-active research to support policy-making to enable craftworkers to deal with the threats and to take advantage of domestic market opportunities created by economic and trade liberalization.

To address these concerns there was a clear need for a membership-based apex body that would represent craftworkers at the national level, serving to help them articulate their needs and advocate for favorable policies for the sector. This body would start by bringing together private businesses, non-profit organizations and cooperatives working in the crafts sector since all of them were affected by the lack of effective policies for the sector.

Within this context, the All India Artisans and Craftworkers Welfare Association (AIACA) started functioning in March 2003 as an informal association of Craft NGOs and producer organizations spread throughout India. After operating as an informal association for one year, AIACA was formally registered under the Societies Registration Act on 30th of January, 2004.

However, AIACA’s work in the initial years saw that providing policy inputs was not adequate as the need for many producer groups was first access to markets and to technical inputs. Hence, the focus of AIACA's work expanded to create programs and platforms that would assist craft producers to showcase their products and become commercially sustainable organizations.