Red tape shunts Dastkar out of Dilli Haat

“We had booked the place in March last year,” says Dastkar Chairperson Laila Tyabji, whose brainchild the bazaar is. “But we are still to see the necessary sanctions.” Five agencies, incidentally, control the sanctions. They are Delhi Tourism, DC (Handicrafts), DC (Handlooms), NDMC and the Dastkari Haat Samiti (which, Tyabji says, has been marginalised in the decision-making process).

Tyabji alleges that Delhi-based traders have taken over Dilli Haat. “So you see the same pottery that you can buy on any Delhi road, or the same block-printed bedsheets that you know have come out of a trans-Yamuna factory,” she says, adding that this makes a mockery of the rule that one craftsperson cannot be at Dilli Haat for more than 15 days and then cannot book the place again for the next three months. “But the subsequent bookings are done in the names of parents, brothers, sisters, relatives, so the same people continue to be around,” charges Tyabji.

The Finance Ministry, meanwhile, has further complicated matters by first slashing and then holding on to the money that the DC (Handicrafts) owes to Dastkar for Nature Bazaar ’97. According to a scheme drawn up by an Eighth Plan Task Force, of which, ironically, Tyabji was a member, in 1984, crafts groups are expected to pay 30 per cent of the organisational costs of a bazaar, with the DC (Handicrafts) picking up rest of the tab. The idea was to enable craftspersons become entrepreneurs and find outlets to do business with their urban buyers.

Dastkar,says Tyabji, spent Rs 5 lakh on the organisation of last year’s bazaar, so it was to be refunded Rs 3,75,000; instead, the Finance Ministry slashed the amount to Rs 2,86,000 and has been sitting on the money. The NGO had submitted its accounts in February last year, but it took the Finance Ministry till the first week of December to communicate its decision, though no questions were asked in the ten months that elapsed.

“We’ve been chasing the money for the previous year and chasing the sanctions for this year. Imagine the time we have spent, the interest we have lost!” says Tyabji. “The office of the DC (Handicrafts) kept telling us that they saw no problem, but as the months crept by, we wanted something in writing. But the money didn’t come, the sanctions didn’t come.”

Tyabji places the blame squarely on the Government’s decision to take away the financial powers of the DC (Handicrafts) and make the Finance Ministry responsible for making payments under the Marketing and Exhibitions Scheme, 1984. “The DC (Handicrafts) is a prisoner of the bureaucracy,” she says, adding that throughout the last financial year, over 450 crafts groups have not been able to sell anything under the umbrella of the DC (Handicrafts) because payments and sanctions due to them have been held up in New Delhi.The problem at Dilli Haat is the new rule that one organisation cannot put up more than 20 stalls. The idea is to prevent any one group from taking over the Haat. Tyabji, however, points out that the Nature Bazaar isn’t just Dastkar’s baby; last year, over 100 crafts groups and environmental NGOs had participated in it.