Title: India's hand-knotted carpet industry in reforms era: export performances and challenges

Authors: Amit K. Giri; S.P. Singh

Addresses: Department of Finance, Xavier Institute of Social Service, Ranchi, Jharkhand, India ' Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India

Abstract: India's hand-knotted carpet industry is inserted into the global value chain since the British rule over India. This paper analyses the export performances of India's hand-knotted carpets and explores the challenges this industry is facing in the reforms era beginning early 1990s. The analysis shows that there has been a large shift in direction of exports of hand-knotted carpets; but there has not been significant increase in the volume of carpet exports in the reforms era. Fieldworks undertaken in the carpet manufacturing cluster reveals that acute shortage of skilled carpet weavers is one of the main causes of no significant increase in the volume of hand-knotted carpets exports. Being a labour-intensive industry, shortage of carpet weavers has also resulted in decline in the exports of fine quality carpets from India in the reforms era.

Keywords: hand-knotted carpets; India; global value chains; child labour; exports; Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme; MGNREGA.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBG.2022.124521

International Journal of Business and Globalisation, 2022 Vol.31 No.1, pp.17 - 35

Received: 27 Jun 2019
Accepted: 08 Jul 2019
Published online: 28 Jul 2022 *

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