Connecting the Unconnected is a monthly column by the Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) that explores how technology can drive inclusion and governance in India. The column focuses on how the digital divide impacts communities differently and advocates for equitable, citizen-informed solutions that ensure technology empowers rather than excludes.
Women of the Toda tribe in Tamil Nadu’s Nilgiris gather, sharing tea, stories, and the intricate work of embroidery passed down through generations. Red, black, and white threads intertwine against green backdrops, narrating the socio-cultural identity of a community through their art.
This unique art, known as Toda embroidery or pukhoor, is more than a craft; it is a living archive of cultural memory. Recognised as one of India’s 653 Geographical Indication (GI)-tagged products (as of July 2025), Toda embroidery symbolises how geography and human creativity merge into heritage. Yet, in this fast-evolving digital age, the question arises: can such traditional art forms find new life and wider reach through technology?
GI: A heritage mark with global roots
GI is a label that identifies goods originating from a specific location and possessing qualities, reputation, or characteristics intrinsically linked to that place. Think of champagne from France or Parmigiano Reggiano cheese from Italy, names inseparable from their origins.
India’s GI framework, formalised under the Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999, was created to conserve cultural heritage, promote rural development, prevent misuse and counterfeiting, create market differentiation, and enhance exports and foreign exchange earnings. It serves as both an economic and cultural safeguard, ensuring that traditional artisans receive due recognition and benefit from their heritage. It is a perfect approach to treat traditional skill-based work as work of knowledge and wisdom.
While the concept traces back to the Paris Convention of 1883 which was strengthened through the WTO’s TRIPS Agreement in 1994, India has indigenised it to reflect its vast artisanal diversity from Kashmiri Pashmina and Banarasi sarees to Darjeeling tea, Kolhapuri chappals, Chanderi sarees, and Madhubani paintings. Earlier this year, the government set a target of reaching 10,000 GI tags by 2030.
Recognition without reach
Despite growing recognition, for many artisans the GI tag exists only as a label and most of their products remain confined to their regions, struggling to access wider markets.
The challenges are deeply interconnected – limited awareness, weak market linkages, digital exclusion, and uneven institutional support. Also many consumers, both in India and abroad, are still unaware of what a GI tag represents, allowing mass-produced imitations to flood markets and undercut authentic crafts.
The digital divide further limits access to e-commerce and social media platforms, isolating artisans from urban and global buyers. As Osama Manzar, founder and director of the Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF), observes in his column in Voice of Fashion, “This reveals a deeper issue in the collective inability to reimagine the handloom ecosystem within a digital paradigm.”
His point underscores the fact that the barriers are not just technological but structural, rooted in how policy, markets, and digital systems continue to overlook the needs of rural artisans. Even when artisans do manage to go online, many still lack the digital skills to effectively present, price, or promote their products.
The economic reality is stark: the average daily income of an artisan ranges between Rs 280 and Rs 375, and in rural areas it can drop to as low as Rs 74. Only 34% of artisans earn consistent wages. The sector remains constrained by disorganisation, low investment, poor exposure to new technologies, lack of market intelligence, and an inadequate institutional framework.
In short, GI registration alone is not enough. The real challenge lies in ensuring that recognition translates into sustainable income, visibility, and growth for artisans.
How digital platforms and AI elevate GI crafts
India is home to over 200 million artisans, including 3.5 million handloom workers, with women forming more than 72% of this workforce. Spread across 470 handloom clusters and operating over 2.3 million looms, the handloom sector alone contributes more than Rs 24,000 crore to the economy each year. Strengthening this community through innovation and empowerment not only uplifts millions of livelihoods but also fuels inclusive economic growth and preserves India’s cultural heritage.
In villages across Tamil Nadu, this transformation is taking shape through multiple support initiatives, with technology emerging as one of the most powerful tools. The DEF works closely with artisans from GI-tagged clusters such as Salem silk, the Pattamadai pai (mat) from Tirunelveli, and Toda embroidery (Ooty), among others, to create a digital ecosystem that integrates naturally into daily life. Here, technology is not an outsider’s intervention but an enabler, a means for tradition to find a modern language, reach new audiences, and create sustainable livelihoods.
Training sessions are designed specifically to meet the unique needs of each artisan community, addressing their craft, local context, and market challenges. What starts as a simple exercise in clicking product photos gradually unfolds into a deeper exploration of storytelling, marketing, and entrepreneurship. Artisans learn how to frame their craft, so that the images can speak for their identity and skill.
Sessions move to studying social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, understanding how each platform functions, who the audiences are, and what content resonates. The women learn to write captions, choose hashtags, and present their work with authenticity and confidence.
Abitha (28), a Toda artisan from Ooty, uses her phone as a creative studio. She watched her grandmother and mother embroider for hours, selling their intricate pieces at low prices. “Now, I use Instagram to promote the same embroidery and share QR code for payments. I don’t have to wait for local buyers or compromise on prices as I get orders directly from people online. It has helped me carry forward our culture with pride,” she says.
The training equips artisans with entrepreneurial skills, including product pricing, tracking customer preferences, responding to inquiries, and managing small online businesses. They also gain hands-on experience with e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and Flipkart, QR-based payments through UPI, and digital marketing strategies, enabling them to turn their traditional crafts into thriving micro-enterprises.
Meera (35), a Pattamadai pai artisan who has woven the GI-tagged product for over a decade, recalls: “I feel so happy when messages pop up on my Facebook asking for prices of the products. I recently shipped 10 handmade mats to a customer in Mumbai. Earlier, my work was only seen in local fairs; now it reaches living rooms in big cities.”
Remarkably, these artisans are now experimenting with AI tools such as ChatGPT. Initially, there was curiosity and laughter as they asked the AI to write catchy captions, suggest photo angles, or even propose variations of traditional patterns. Over time, these tools become quiet partners in their creative process, enhancing communication, marketing, and product presentation.
Some artisans even experiment with AI-generated designs inspired by traditional motifs, blending heritage with contemporary aesthetics. This use of technology demonstrates how innovation need not replace tradition but can amplify it, creating new opportunities for cultural preservation and economic growth.
Threads of the future
From the scenic valleys of Kashmir, where around 3.5 lakh artisans create handmade products across at least 16 unique crafts, women, who once made up 47.4% of the artisan workforce but had stepped back, are now returning to spinning charkhas and weaving looms, empowered by GI recognition and the opportunities it brings; to the GI & Beyond Summit organised by the Textile Ministry, this trajectory underscores the urgent call to support artisans, preserve traditional crafts, and unlock the immense potential these heritage skills hold, both artisanally and economically.
Supporting GI-tagged products today goes beyond conscious consumption; it is a quiet act of preservation and participation. Each purchase sustains a lineage of skill and storytelling, while each click, share, or digital interaction carries a legacy forward. These treasures, once crafted in silence across India’s villages, now speak through pixels and posts, carrying the stories of looms and the pride of communities, truly embodying GI India’s tagline: ‘Invaluable Treasures of Incredible India’.
Mili Dangwal works as a Senior Officer with the Digital Empowerment Foundation and as project lead to DIGI.
Views expressed are the author’s own.