Srinagar, Feb. 2 -- Every winter, India's cities witness a quiet, unsettling ritual. A Kashmiri shawlwalla rings a doorbell, opens his bag on a stranger's sofa or compound, recites the language of heritage, and waits - half salesman, half supplicant. This is not an enterprise. This is state government policy failure. Kashmir's shawls did not lose their market. The state lost its will to build one.

There is no single empowered body whose sole mandate is to sell Kashmiri shawls.

Marketing responsibility is scattered across:

Everyone "supports." No one is accountable for sales. Not even this, previous, or any other successive governments. In this vacuum, the artisan himself becomes the final marketing mechanism - poorly equipped, uninsure...