Jagdalpur (Chhattisgarh), Apr 3 (PTI) With an emotional tribal art maestro standing next to him, Neelesh Misra, India’s leading storyteller and a social entrepreneur, launched a national initiative for rural creators starting from Bastar, one of the rich hubs of tribal heritage in India.
In the presence of Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel, Misra exchanged an MoU with Bastar District Collector Rajat Bansal on Saturday to make the district the first partner of the Ten Thousand Creators Project.
“This is a very difficult art. All I want is that after me, my children and their children’s children should practice this craft,” Phagnu Ram Sagar or Phagnu Dada, a Dhokra art guru, said in a film broadcast watched keenly by the chief minister at the event.
Dhokra is non–ferrous metal casting using the lost wax casting technique and is considered one of India’s most ancient artforms.
Phagnu Dada, from Chhattisgarh’s Chilkuti Village, was sitting in the audience when he was asked by Misra to walk onto the stage with him. He did, slightly bewildered, moving forward with his walking stick, and was honoured by Baghel.
“We are delighted and humbled. Phagnu Dada, being honoured today, is the first of the 10,000 creators we shall reach out to,” Misra said.
The project shall next be expanded to districts in Gujarat, Bihar and Jharkhand, with discussions underway with stakeholders in several other states, Misra said.
Misra is one of India’s leading communicators whose work centres around small towns and rural India. He is most well known in India as an audio storyteller with outreach to more than 100 cities and towns and tens of millions of people.
The Ten Thousand Creators Project is a joint initiative of two of Misra’s ventures – Gaon Connection, a rural platform with its presence in 425 districts spread across all states – and The Slow Movement, which has content, products and marketplace verticals and is creating a community and social commerce marketplace in India and overseas at www.slowbazaar.com and The Slow App.
In its first phase, the project aims to impact 10,000 creators through one or more of the following: – Branding to create respect and visibility for the artisans through content creation in the form of video, audio and text campaigns; – Increased income by showcasing them in a dedicated manner on Slow’s platforms, including its e-commerce website www.slowbazaar.com and The Slow App; -Income-generating knowledge and best practices through direct content dissemination and linkages with specialists and market experts; -Health insurance and life insurance, to prevent income loss due to illness or death of an artisan who is the family’s primary earner; -Tools if needed for higher income generation.
Misra said the project is a manifestation of India’s ‘Vocal for Local’ vision in the truest sense.
“On one side are millions of people keen, especially post-Covid, to explore healthier and pure food, handcrafted products and meaningful, mindful content — and on the other, hundreds of thousands of creators unable to access these audiences on digital platforms.
“We want to try and address these gaps,” he said.
Misra’s project is aligned with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s One District One Product (ODOP) programme, launched in Uttar Pradesh in January 2018 by the Yogi Adityanath government and adopted nationally after its success.
The ODOP programme aims to convert every district in India into an export hub by promoting one product that the district specialises in.
“Our project is a manifestation of India’s ‘Vocal for Local’ vision in the truest sense – going deep to the panchayat level and connecting the creators with a global audience,” Misra said.
Misra said that Slow had been approached by ODOP for a possible collaboration and discussions were underway on working together. To give the project scale, a similar collaboration is being explored with the Confederation Of Indian Industry (CII).
Misra’s project though has a larger ambit, and the creators covered under it would go beyond artisans.
“We have widened the definition of creators beyond what is commonly understood – to include all those creating something out of rural innovation and creativity at the grassroots which can create livelihood opportunities,” he said.
“This includes handicraft artisans, folk and other ‘non-TikTok’ rural content creators on the margins of the creative economy, and women in self-help groups and farmer producer organisations creating food and non-food products,” he said. PTI RT RT
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