CUTTACK: Owing to lack of government support, non-existence of cooperatives, poor entrepreneurship, professional rivalries and invasion of machine-finished products in markets, the silversmiths or the filigree artisans of Cuttack are now at a crossroad of socio-economic degeneration.

It's not that the demand for silver ornaments or for that matter the filigree works has fallen down over the years. Neither has the cost of white metal gone out of reach like the yellow metal _ gold.

``Instead, overexploitation of artisans by middlemen and bereft of a proper market to sale their products have pushed the poor silversmiths to the brink of penury who are now switching over to other trades to eke out a living,'' said 60-year-old Kartik Maharana, a filigree artisan of Alisha Bazar here.

In the absence of cooperatives, middlemen known as `Bhatias' locally, provide raw materials, take the finished products at a lower price and sale them at exorbitant cost in organised showrooms elsewhere outside the State or even in abroad.

``The Bhatias are sucking our blood and the wages we receive depend on the payments decided by them,'' said another old hand in the trade.

When asked as to why are they not dealing with organised showrooms directly? Prompt came the reply from the old man, ``We do not have capital to meet the contracts of showrooms.''

About three decades ago there were nearly 10 cooperatives working in this sector in Cuttack alone to uplift the economy of artisans but all of them had liquidated now, sources aid.

Plight of artisans

Sociologist Rabindra Mohanty, who recently submitted a post-doctoral paper to Nottingham University, UK on exploitation of filigree artisans of Cuttack, however, gave a plethora of reasons for the plight of these artisans.

``Basically, the artisans are not united. There is a lot of infighting among them, which is why they are vulnerable to exploitation. Banks and cooperatives are not coming forward to finance them. Moreover, the market needs to be ensured to sale the products made by these artisans,'' felt the social scientist.

The government was not forthcoming to bail out the traditional artisans from exploitations, the researcher said adding that a post of deputy registrar of industrial cooperative society in directorate of industries was created for this purpose.

But the post very often remained vacant and the officials did not have statistics to tell how many artisans were currently working in the trade, Mohanty said

Shrabani Haldar, another research scholar who has made an in-depth study on the subject, said that the greatest threat to the filigree artisans was from the machine-finished products of Karimnagar in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh.

Since the gold-plated silver ornaments were now in demand, there were no takers for the hand-finished products, she observed and silversmiths here too acknowledged this albeit grudgingly.

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