Heritage Crafts
The Heritage Craft course wm include an eclectic range of crafts from ditTerent parts of the country In classes XI and XII, a student wn select any two core papers from pottery, tie and dye, batik, madhubani painting and papiermach&. In addition to these, he wn need to take a specialisation from among bamboo and sikki grass work, basket weaving, calligraphy, Tanjore painting and glass work, glass painting, stone and wood carving, bidri, metal (setting gold, silver, copper and brass), macrame, assemblage, filigree, traditional wall decorations with sutli and bitli work, leather puppet making. Other options include weaving durees and forms of embroidery such as kantha, phulkari,zardosi, applique, cutwork, sindhi and kashmiri, mehndi, rangoli, alpana and kolam. Students wn be required to work hands-on with the craft medium as project-based learning, informs Gurumurthy.

The curriculum-setters' rationale for the course is to help the multitudes of potential Indian job seekers capitalise on the traditional skills which emerge from the reservoir of an over 4,000-year-old civilisation.

No wonder the crafts sector is the second-largest employer in India. One out of 200 citizens in the country is an artisan. The statistics are significant as the country is recording the highest population growth among sections projected to be least skilled and educated, says a position paper by a focus group. This also aims to preserve the crafts, 10 per cent of whose creators, according to the paper, India loses every decade.

Meanwhile, whether schools have the capacity to implement the courses, Gurumurthy says, "These are things schools have to look at." But she says, "We may provide training to teachers. We can identify the needs." Yet, she adds, "This is nothing new... We are assuming that there will not be a dearth of teachers in this."