Socio-economic status of glove puppeteers of east midnapur, West Bengal, India: A case study

Puppetry has been one of the popular performing arts in India; Glove puppetry is one of them. Glove or Hand Puppetry is deliberated to be among the earliest puppetry. Padmatamali, a village of East Midnapur district of West Bengal is known for the Glove puppetry or Beniputul. In the time of British rule, most of the families (around eighty) of Harijan pally of Padmatamali village used to perform Beniputul door to door. Now the number of puppeteers has been reduced to 25. This study made an effort to study the perceptions of the puppeteers regarding status of puppetry and socio-economic condition of them. Snowball sampling and descriptive statistics have been used for better understanding and analysis. The result shows that there is no enthusiasm of current generation of puppeteers on puppetry, only the willpower of present puppeteers and governmental intervention and allowances help this art form to survive otherwise it can be wiped out like many art forms of rural India.