DK Kapila The Oracle

  The Handicraft and Handloom Industry- Scaling up. Dinesh K Kapila, CGM NABARD (Retd) Published in The Business Sandesh 04/09/2026 Handicraft refers to any item made entirely by hand or with simple tools, covering a broad range of materials like pottery, metal, wood, and jewelry, while handloom is a specific subset restricted to fabrics and textiles woven manually on a loom without electricity.   The Indian handicrafts sector is valued around $4.85 billion to over $8 billion, with exports reaching roughly Rs 33,424 crore, and is part of a massive global market. The Indian handloom market is smaller, with domestic sales at Rs 4094 crore and expected to grow to Rs 8000 crore by 2037. Exports were Rs 1340 crore.  The market is somewhat stagnant, as power looms and factories produce uniform, cheaper alternatives that easily undercut handmade prices. Intermediaries control raw materials and supply chains, taking most profits and leaving artisans in low-in...

  Two Glasses in Your Hands are worth … Dinesh K Kapila Obviously this is inspired by the proverb, a bird in hand is worth two in the bush. The intrinsic philosophy is that it is better to hold onto a small, certain advantage you already possess than to risk losing it by chasing something potentially better but highly uncertain. This saying dates back centuries, rooted in medieval falconry and hunting, where a bird already captured and held in the hand was far more valuable than birds still hiding in the wild bushes. Men have subscribed to that thought ever since and now it seems extended it to alcohol. There was a reunion of classmates and the greying classmates invited even the younger lot to join in. It was the party with a buzz. Now at this party there was Manohar, quietly observing, as he stared at the glass of whiskey in his left hand. It was surely a glass of whiskey, with a smoky amber quality. He looked at his drink .Thoughtfully. Maybe he was nostalgic, about his youth an...

  The Cultural Indoctrination Against Women and Girls -A few thoughts Dinesh K Kapila (written in Facebook Aug 2024) This issue is now again occupying our minds and thoughts, every now and then an unfortunate dastardly event triggers our thoughts and conscience and then we go back to the status quo. Perhaps not exactly status quo, the situation is much improved then it was just a few decades ago. Data is misleading many a family chose in earlier times to cover up or brush an incident aside. And stating that as women have stepped out of the confines of their houses, such incidents can happen. This is totally illogical. But to go back to cultural issues, an acquaintance just shared that in HP, which we consider a socially progressive state, there are still cases where the son is admitted to a private school and the daughter to a government school. The cultural indoctrination I find is deep rooted and starts with the ladies themselves. Exceptions are there but repeatedly I find post...

  Organic and Only Organic Dinesh K Kapila I was at a leading grocery store when a smartly and expensively dressed (top brands bag to clothes to shoes) confident and pleasant looking young lady around forty years walked in and straight away went into action with the Manager. Do you keep organic stuff, I do not want any of the regular, unhealthy stuff you sell to people. I want good quality products, the poor guy simply said all our products are the best brands or our own tested and procured products. She waved an elegantly manicured hand and one diamond wearing finger in the air towards him and said ‘dekhte hain’ (let me see). I want only pure high class organic stuff. Give me jaggery (Shakar). Only organic. The Manager scooted off, brought a trolley, and plonked two packets of jaggery saying, purely organic Ma’m, she looked at it with suspicion but sort of nodded and then she said I want high quality premium Gur (solidified jaggery) but only organic, and the guy says Ma’m Gur is...

  The   Mindset of an   Agri Tech S tart Up Founder – A Perspective By Dinesh K Kapila, CGM (Retd) NABARD.   Traditional agribusinesses have historically operated within linear, low-margin frameworks, a new class of agritech founders has now emerged to redesign agribusiness, critical value chains and manufacturing. However, building a scalable agritech enterprise is structurally distinct from digitized platform based entrepreneurship. The agritech founder must possess a unique psychological architecture, it diverges sharply from that of a urban oriented standard enterprise entrepreneur. Because agriculture is fundamentally an open-air, biologically constrained, and culturally entrenched system, founders require a profile of measured risk tolerance, operational patience, and deep, field-level empathy. The fundamental goal of agritech is the optimization of resource use, the reduction of post-harvest waste, and the enhancement of farmer income throu...

  Three short stories from Haryana, maybe an insight somewhere !! Dinesh K Kapila Haryana, the normal perception is that religion or spirituality or being urbane is normally miles away from its residents. Let us see if this theory holds, as I heard these stories, or what I understood of the stories, I am sharing. Now to the first story. A person from Haryana, deep in the hinterland, saw videos about people meditating and said to his friends, just why are we sitting quietly, see all these guys sitting in Benaras and Badrinath and other religious places who have managed to evolve into higher souls. Why the hell should I be left? I am also going to pray, so he decided he was not only going to pray but attain a higher level of consciousness. He decided he was going to go to the nearest hill and climb on top of the highest point in the open and then only he would start to meditate. The second he he started to climb he thought once he reached the peak he would smoke a bidi before ...