alt Hacker NewsYou don't need a digital ledger - these are ODOP goods [0] so it's fairly straigtforward to identify authenticity based on the wholeseller's GI tag [1].
GI Tagging for ODOP products is taken extremely seriously as the products associated with ODOP tend to be associated with locally powerful khadi cooperatives and because this is a personal project of Modi and Shah as they started their political careers in Khadi Cooperatives and Amit Shah is the Cooperation (as in Cooperatives and Khadi) Minister, so complaints tend to be taken seriously. Additionally, textile cooperatives are extremely important in TN as well, and the TN government closely enforces it's GIs as well as building their own e-commerce platform and showrooms for selling cooperative goods [2].
[0] - https://www.investindia.gov.in/one-district-one-product
[1] - https://kancheepuram.nic.in/about-district/gi-tag-product-ka...
[2] - https://www.cooptex.com/
Your information about tagging is relevant and useful---and a valid critique of the techno-solutionsim espoused by the piece. Words that could have been spent on talking about the incredible technology that handlooms actually are.
But keep the votebank politics out of this man. Every political leader in the history of the country has espoused such kinship and love for the handicraft. Their reasons are their own.
Khadi and handicrafts have been political since before the beginning of the republic of India.
Besides, cooperatives are well-known mechanisms to launder money, and their politically "clean" image is why they are a favourite laundry of politicians.