Article
Skill Development and Entrepreneurial Growth among Indian Footwear Artisans: Traditional Clusters, Institutional Interventions, and Pathways to Sustainable Livelihoods
The leather and footwear industry is one of the most labor intensive industries in India, with an estimated employment of 4.42 million people and is based on a huge body of craft known as leather craft which has been passed down from generation to generation in pockets like Kolhapur, Agra, Kanpur, Chennai, Ambur, Jaipur and Jodhpur. However, those who continue to carry on this tradition are still mostly part of the informal sector, with small and uncertain wages, from which they are often excluded from the value assigned to their work by international markets. This paper explores the link between skill development and entrepreneurial development of artisans in the category of craftsmen- Footwear artisans in India and whether today's skilling initiatives are transferring skills from traditional crafts to self-working, profitable enterprises. The study is designed using a qualitative approach and secondary data, and the data is synthesized based on industry statistics, government scheme documents, cluster-level data, and existing theory about human capital, entrepreneurship, and sustainable livelihoods. It matches the institutional skilling framework, such as Leather Sector Skill Council, Footwear Design and Development Institute, Central Footwear Training Insitutes, Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana, PM Vishwakarma and PM-AJAY schemes, and One District One Product with the lived experiences of artisan clusters. The analysis reveals that skill development is not enough in entrepreneurial growth; entrepreneurs must also be technically upskilled to achieve livelihood benefits, which was evident during the Kolhapuli chappal controversy in 2025 when they lacked the capacity to design and brand the food and market link. The paper suggests an integrated “skill-to-enterprise” mechanism and suggests policy interventions for building a sustainable, artisan owned enterprise ecosystem from the Indian artisanal footwear base.