Funding Agency : DST
The Chamba rural Leather tanning/craft in rural areas (among the oldest traditionalskills/Practice) has declined virtually to extinction in the last few decades,unable to match the productivities of, or withstand pressures from, the growingorganized tanning industry. Most of artisans have become de-skilled,having lost their traditional occupations and have swollen the ranks ofagricultural /other manual labour. Rawhides emanate from dead cattle invillages, still flayed mostly by traditional flayers, they thengo through various stages/levels of curing, storage, transportationand trade to finally reach industrial tanneries mostly in urban concentrations. Some estimates put wastage or damage of rawhides at fairly high levels of15 to 20 percent.
An alternative scenariowas envisaged and worked out to tackle these problems, while simultaneously`restructuring' the leather tanning in favour of manufacturingbases in rural areas so as to benefit the artisans. Briefly, it is based on `short-circuiting' the flow ofmaterials(raw hides and finished leathers) described above, by producing leather at appropriatelyscaled units in rural areas(the source of rawhides ) and selling these in local market to the extent demandexists and to non-local markets as finished or semi-finished leathers. Theproposed glazed vegetable leather unit linked with product diversificationcould also later be networked or clustered for expanded and higher value-addedethnic product such as chamba chappal and other products for sales to bothlocal and non-local markets
In such a ‘restructuring' largesavings in transport/storage costs and trade marginswould be effected. Further, wastage/spoilage would beminimized by processing of hides virtually at source and improved collectionand flaying practices through networking of flayers motivated by higher pricesfor raw hides made possible by the above savings.
It would also significantly lightenthe pollution load in these larger units, mostly in urban concentrations, bycutting down the number of operations/processes required. A major benefitis the minimization (or even virtual avoidance) of salt-bearing effluents generated in pre-tanningprocesses/operations. If the latter are carried out in decentralized rural units,not only is the pollution load lower due to smaller scales butalso, the relatively smaller surface area required for solarevaporation is more readily available in rural areas.