Odisha: Naveen Patnaik inaugurates National Tribal Craft Mela 2019 in Bhubaneswar

Handicraft items, handloom products, iron, bamboo products, puppetry, lacquer craft, along with tribal jewellery, craft and textiles will be displayed by artisans during the seven-day-long event of National Tribal Craft Mela 2019 which was inaugurated by CM of Odisha in Bhubaneswar on 23rd November.

Bhubaneswar (Odisha): Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Saturday inaugurated the National Tribal Craft Mela - 2019 in Bhubaneswar.

More than 240 tribal artisans from 18 states including Sikkim, Manipur, Nagaland, Assam, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal are participating in the Mela.

"We are weavers and make local work clothes like Gamosa etc. The state government has invited to sell our clothes here," an Assamese woman at the Mela said.

Handicraft items, handloom products, iron, bamboo products, puppetry, lacquer craft, along with tribal jewellery, craft and textiles will be displayed by artisans during this seven-day-long event.

According to the government, the objective of the Mela is to preserve, promote and popularise traditional tribal art and craft and help the artisans to find better opportunities to develop their skills through cross-cultural interactions for commercial viability of their products.

As a part of 5T initiative of the state government, 45 supplementary readers prepared in 21 tribal languages have also been released simultaneously by the Chief Minister on the occasion. These supplementary readers will be used as learning materials for multilingual education (MLE) of ST students.