Challenges in India’s Artisanal 
Textile Sector: Identification 
and Prioritisation

The artisanal textile industry plays a vital role in sustaining livelihoods and preserving traditional craftsmanship, but faces declining competitiveness due to industrialisation, fast-fashion expansion and systemic constraints. This study examines critical barriers affecting the sector using an integrated Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process–decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory framework grounded in Systems Theory and Institutional Theory. Using the framework, the study classifies 25 barriers into 8 barrier domains identified based on Porter’s Value Chain and political, economic, social and technological analysis. The study then captures relative importance and causal relationships among barriers based on expert inputs. The findings reveal that financial constraints, regulatory barriers and limited market access act as primary systemic drivers, exerting a strong influence on multiple downstream challenges. Addressing these core financial and institutional bottlenecks can generate broader system-wide improvements. In contrast, operational barriers such as logistics, workforce, technological and social constraints are largely dependent, indicating that they arise from upstream structural inefficiencies and can be better addressed through long-term, integrated interventions rather than isolated actions. The study contributes by offering an integrated analytical framework that simultaneously evaluates priority and causality of barriers, providing a structured basis for targeted interventions in artisanal textile systems. The findings emphasise the importance of addressing root drivers to support sustainable sectoral development and structured policy design.