alt Hacker News> Yet, the market for "Indian Luxury" is booming globally. We see European houses acting as colonial curators of Indian heritage: Prada rebranding the Kolhapuri chappal for ₹84,500 ($930); Gucci selling the common kurta as an 'exotic kaftan' for the price of a small car; and Dior releasing a ₹18,180,000 ($200,000) coat dripping in Lucknowi Mukaish work without a whisper of credit to the artisans. The global appetite for the aesthetic is ravenous. But in Kanchipuram, the very hands that feed this hunger are vanishing.
The Western colonial imperial system never truly went away, it simply morphed into an opaque inscrutable machinery to make it palatable to its own highly refined taste. An empire of human rights.
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It's India's State and Local Governments are promoting this - most artisans that manufacturing these goods are doing so as part of a cooperative as Khadi and MSME Cooperatives is a major pillar for Indian politics and economic development, along with One District One Product [0] in order to build a heritage consumer goods industry similar to what Japan did.
It's also something that is deeply personal for Narendra Modi and Amit Shah [1] as they started their political careers climbing up the cooperative ladder - they were able to turn Gujarat from being a Congress only state to a BJP only state by co-opting cooperatives in the dairy industry [2]. And in Kancheepuram's case it's an extremely important industry in TN.
Furthemore, if Prada or Chanel buys Indian heritage artisan goods and gives it the luxury veneer, it helps MSMEs and khadi cooperatives demand better terms when wholesaling light manufactured products.
Finally, at a personal level, much of my family is associated with Khadi and Cooperative industries - they are one of the only ways to build medium or even high value industries while giving participants some degree of agency. The profits of khadi goods being sold at high margins ends up in the hands of cooperative members and cooperatives tend to re-invest in capacity building or subsidizing new entrants. This is why you see cooperative banks dot all of India.
[0] - https://www.investindia.gov.in/one-district-one-product
[1] - https://theprint.in/opinion/politically-correct/rahul-gandhi...
[2] - https://scroll.in/article/858585/amul-is-now-a-congress-mukt...
I find it silly and patronising to call this colonialism.
Colonialism is when globalism? Much of Indians have no problem (I assume) with this.