Production Organisation and Determinants of Income of Artisans in Hand Embroidery Industry of West Bengal, India

Major segment of employment in hand embroidery industry of West Bengal are in the small and marginal enterprises. Low-skilled, low value added products along with highly skilful export oriented products are produced at different types of production organisations. A large number of home based production organisations are operated by needy artisan family members. The hand embroidery works has become means to maintain somehow subsistence livelihood to the marginal families. The paper tries to find out in an intensive way the structure of the industry, the relationship among the different persons and institutions involved. It also tries to explore the determinants of income of the artisans through estimations of econometric models. Concluding part of the paper focuses light on some measure for future economic amelioration of these base-level artisans who are the actual powerful class of the industry.