By : Mohammad Iqbal Mir


Given the overlapping and duplicacy of Handicrafts related activities at various levels and resultant anomalous, the need for evolving and applying unified administrative control can hardly be over emphasized. The activities colliding with each other at various levels have fall out of defeating the very purpose for which undertaken in hand. Unified administrative control or what in management parlance is know as unity of command has been gaining wide spread acceptance. Owing origin to military hierarchy it represent the concept of one single boss for each person. It implies that at any given time a subordinate should be subject to or required to receive orders from not more than one immediate superior. The concept of unified administrative control requires that every member in an organization should report to one and only one leader.

Apart from securing effective organization it involves an arrangement where orders and command are free from confusion. It has been observed that failure to observe the unity of command leads to disorganization, chaos inefficiency and ultimates breakdown in administration, listing the merits of principle of unity of command, Henry Fayol the eminent management luminary has right put it should it be violate. Authority is undermined discipline is in jeopardy order disturbed and stability threatened. Equally important is the fact that the adherence to principle of unity of command maintains effective discipline thereby checkmating vacillation and irresponsibility on the part of employees. It arrests the trend to pass the buck. Play off one superior against another. It will not be off the remarks to say that very concept of unity of administrative control is necessary consequence of hierarchical Organization. From what has been said above, it becomes clear beyond pale shadow of doubt that concept of unity is sought after principle for unified administrative control can be made out for variegated reasons. Of late there has been spurt in intrusion of conflicting activities in the domain of directorate of handicrafts. The agencies at government as well as private level have sprung up arrogated to themselves the role to usher in promotion of handicrafts sector. Thanks to multiple activities undertaken by other organisation, the role of Handicrafts department is being systematically undermine and undone, so much so that deptt: of handicrafts has been forced to take back seat. This is to be adjudged against the fact that these organisation allure artisans by their attractive scheme. The various centrally sponsored schemes under the aiges of deptt: like DRDA, khadi and village, small scale industries and for that matter, office of the development commissioner, have been selling like hot cakes, reason being attractive incentives. However, dispassionate and disinterest analysis reveal that these measures don’t augur well for promotion of handicrafts sector. On the contrary the multifarious activities at the best work at cross purpose and lack cohesion and direction, making it rudderless ship. It does not stand to test of reasons that organisation barefoot of expert knowledge and infrastructure have made inroads into this sector. The half hearted attempts being made to ameliorate the lot of training programme being run by the various agencies. Instead of being complimentary to each other. More often than not training programme have become antagonistic to each other this is corroborated from the disparity in the rate of sounding death knell to the training programme. Instead of evolving unified pattern of stipend one gleans the impression that these organizations engaged in training programme in big way are pitted against each other. In order to rejuvenate otherwise sterile training programme the need over the years has been felt vociferously for unified mechanism control and direction.

In case of registration of artisans/units. Instead of facilitating things registration by the office of the development commissioner govt of India has made the confusion worst confounded. Infact the duplicacy and overlapping in area of registration accounts for multiple bottlenecks and loopholes on the base of overlapping of registration the efficacy and answerability received set back no worthwhile contribution can be made unless registration is being done at single focal point. Here the role of directorate of handicrafts can be invoked to ride the ills being experienced on this count.

(Author can be reached at mirmohammadiqbal0@gmail.com)