Dastkari Haat Samiti

To preserve and develop India's craft skills by creating direct marketplaces and other platforms where craftspeople interact with buyers, to eliminate exploitative middlemen, to document India's craft traditions, and to create livelihoods for artisan communities across India.

Dastkari Haat Samiti is a not-for-profit national association of craftspeople, established in 1986 by Jaya Jaitly, and one of the oldest and most experienced crafts organisations in India working for the preservation and development of India's craft skills. The Samiti was founded with 90 members and today supports over 60,000 artisans, their families, and over 350 crafts groups and co-operatives across 29 states. It is recognised and supported in its work by several ministries of the Government of India, the UNDP, UNESCO, the World Bank, and major corporate sector groups. Its most significant institutional contribution was the conception and establishment of Dilli Haat, the permanent crafts and cultural marketplace at INA, New Delhi, set up in 1994 jointly by Delhi Tourism, the Ministry of Textiles, and the New Delhi Municipal Corporation, enabling over 75,000 small crafts producers to conduct direct sales. The Samiti's principal annual event is the Dastkari Haat Craft Bazaar, now in its 40th year, held at Dilli Haat and featuring over 180 artisans and master craftsmen. It has created the largest-ever digital exhibition of Indian crafts (52 traditions, 2,000-plus photographs) on Google Arts and Culture, and has crafted installations for the Shilp Deergha in the New Parliament of India.

Dastkari Haat Samiti's founding in 1986 was itself the product of a longer journey. Jaya Jaitly had been working with craftspeople since 1965, beginning with a visit to Kashmir where she encountered master artisans of extraordinary skill struggling to survive without market access. She had co-founded the Dastkar Society for Crafts and Craftspeople in 1981 with Laila Tyabji and others. But she saw a need for a body specifically constituted as an association of craftspeople themselves rather than advocates for them: an organisation whose membership and leadership was grounded in the craft community.

Dastkari Haat Samiti was established in 1986 with 90 founding members. Its model was built on one insight: the best way to eliminate exploitative middlemen was to make them unnecessary by creating direct marketplaces where craftspeople could interact face to face with buyers. Jaitly's phrase, 'make them salesmen,' captures the philosophy: the bazaar format gave craftspeople agency in pricing, communication, and relationship-building with customers that the traditional supply chain had denied them.

The Samiti's most consequential institutional contribution was the creation of Dilli Haat. Conceived by the Samiti and proposed to the Government of Delhi, Dilli Haat was established in 1994 at INA, New Delhi, as a contemporary interpretation of the traditional village market, operated jointly by Delhi Tourism, the Ministry of Textiles, and the New Delhi Municipal Corporation. Its rotating-participant model, with craftspeople staying for only a fortnight at a time, created a permanent kaleidoscope of India's craft diversity at a single location in the capital. Since 1994, Dilli Haat has enabled over 75,000 small crafts producers to conduct direct sales.

The Samiti also pioneered crafts documentation and research at a time when the sector had very little formal institutional attention. It created the Crafts Map of India, later donated to the Crafts Museum, New Delhi, and now permanently displayed at Lok Kalyan Marg Metro Station and Ashoka University, Haryana. It built the largest-ever digital exhibition of Indian crafts on Google Arts and Culture: 52 traditions, over 2,000 photographs. And it has worked in the New Parliament of India, creating installations for the Shilp Deergha that bring the living craft tradition into the country's highest legislative space.

In 2026, the Samiti celebrated its 40th anniversary, marking four decades of sustained work in a sector that has no shortage of advocates but very few organisations with the operational track record, government relationships, and artisan-led foundation that Dastkari Haat Samiti has built.