Hello and welcome to this episode of Pulse Maharashtra with me Vinaya Deshpande. I am your host and the Maharashtra Chief of Bureau of The Hindu, and today am in Kolhapur to bring you this special episode. What makes a leather sandal a Kolhapuri chappal? And is there really one Kolhapuri chappal? Through all the coverage of Kolhapuri chappals, this is something not many know.
Vegetable tanning, a dying art, a procedure which lasts almost 21 days and consists of 45 to 50 elaborate processes. And that’s why, today, we bring you the biggest secret behind this 800-year old tradition, a Rs 1400 Crore industry which employs close to 1 lakh artisans in the eight districts of Maharashtra and Karnataka.
