BACK	ARTS-ENTERTAINMENT - 2.

Even official patronage is failing to rescue craftsmen who are not smart enough to innovate by using plastics or adopting techniques which are anything but traditional.

Take the case of Abdul Khader who weaves fine rush mats, long a speciality of Pattmadi village on the banks of the river Kaveri in Tamil Nadu where he comes from. ''Pattamadi mats were once an essential part of a bride's dowry but nowadays people prefer synthetic mats,'' he laments.

Khader was one of thirty master craftsmen invited to display their wares at an exhibition organised here every December by the National Handicrafts Board. His soft and pliable reed mats won him a national award this year and they sold well at the exhibition. ''We had good sales at this exhibition but that does not mean there is a future for weavers of the Pattmadi mats,'' he says.

Displaying the piece that clinched the award, Khader explains that it was made by carefulling splitting each reed into several strands and then woven into a fine fabric. ''I am the only one left in Pattamadi who can weave such a mat.''

Not only are Khader's own children uninterested in the art but the wild reeds which go into the best mats are themselves becoming extinct.

''Artifical fertilisers are playing havoc with the suppleness of the reeds,'' he says. Worse, Khader finds it difficult getting credit to buy all his raw materials in the one month that the weeds are ripe for harvesting. ''Even the government certificate saying that I am a Master Craftsman cannot get me a bank loan of 600 dollars which I need to buy the reeds.''

Other weavers in Pattamadi are taking to unskilled occupations and even hard labour as a livelihood, reflecting a trend across India in which artisan communities are being forced to abandon their skills for cheap.

According to the Peoples of India survey, while there were 35 labour communities in the eastern state of Orissa in 1971, ten years later, their number had gone up to 202. In neighbouring Bihar, the number of communities reporting labour as their main occupation went up up by 133 in the same period.

Lochan Meher, a weaver from Orissa state, says ''ours is the only family left in the village of Bagba which does 'ikat''weaving and we have stayed in it only because my brother was recognised as Master Craftsman a few years ago.

Ikat, an intricate technique, peculiar to Orissa and Andhra Pradehs states, permits the weaving of colourful designs into fabric. Double ikat is even more intricate and of the few people alive who can still execute it is Chalapathi Rao, who claimed the Master Craftsman title for weaving this year. ''Double ikat is a difficult art and I am now the only person in my village who can do it,'' he says.

Rao's sons work in an automobile company and it is almost certain that his art will die with him. The few weavers still carrying on have discarded natural yarns like silk and cotton for polyester which is more popular for its durability.

A similar example is to be found among the ironsmiths from the central Indian tribal district of Bastar who for centuries made flat, frontal, two-legged figures of horses as votive figures. But after city folk took a fancy to the figures, the tribals began to make decorative rather than votive four legged pieces because they could be stood upright in living rooms.

''Those who could not adapt to the new style simply dropped out,'' says a craftsman at the exhibition.

Yet another example of an art visibly dying for want of patronage at the exhibition is ''Thewa'' glass jewellery fahioned by fusing patterns made on gold foil into glass.

Says Ganpat, a thewa craftsman from the village of Mandsaur in Rajasthan, ''I am the only one making this type of jewellery and nobody is interested in learning the art from me.'' To a lady who wants to know why one of his pendants costs 25 dollars when it was mostly glass with little gold in it Ganpat retorts '' you are paying for the workmanship not the gold.''

But the fate of women potters in the village of Aruvacode in Kerala would seem worse than that of the mat makers, the weavers and the glass jewellery makers. With cheap, unbreakable PVC containers pricing their wares out of the market, the women have been reduced to prostituion to survive.

The POI survey records that as many as 157 potter communities have entirely given up the trade to work as labourers or worse. Their place is being taken up by people who tradtionally have had nothing to do with pottery.What they do have is the money to invest in machinery which can work with terracotta that can be fashioned into anything from garden lamps to jewellery popular with the elite.

In fact, the situation is spawning a whole new generation of craftspeople and crafts which have little to do with tradition and less with handicraft. (END/IPS/rdr/mk/97)