CHANDIGARH: Chess-piece manufacturers in Amritsar take pride in their unique artistry that is unmatched by any other manufacturer in the world. However, due to growing uncertainty caused by the ongoing Israel-Palestine and Russia-Ukraine wars, export orders have fallen by 70-80% this year. Chess tournaments around the world are played exclusively with wooden pieces even today. Chess-piece manufacturing is a highly specialised cottage industry in Amritsar. Over 1000 artisans and 500 specialised artisans are employed in 20-35 small and medium manufacturing units in the city. Chess-piece manufacturers have been working generation after generation, painstakingly carving individual pieces with simple tools; the knight alone takes up to seven days to carve. The wooden chess pieces and sets manufactured in Amritsar are priced between Rs 5,000 and Rs 25,000 depending on quality, design, material, and craftsmanship. Wooden chess sets from Amritsar are among the most sought-after gift items during Christmas and New Year. Talking to TNIE, third-generation chess manufacturer Rishi Sharma says that the 20-35 units manufacturing chess pieces in Amritsar make annual sales worth Rs 20 crores. “Of this, Rs 5 crore is in the domestic market and the rest in the international market. We were exporting chess pieces and sets to USA, Canada, UK, Europe (Norway, Germany, Italy, France and other countries). Australia, Ukraine, Iran and Israel. However, due to global uncertainty, our export orders have fallen by 70-80%,” he says. Rising inflation and increasing costs of raw material and labour have severely impacted the industry, he says. “The other major factor is obtaining the ‘Vriksh Certificate’ from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), started in 2018. The certificate takes about fifteen days to a month to get delivered,” he adds. To obtain the certificate, the manufacturers need to furnish details of every Sheesham tree from which wood for the chess pieces is sourced. “We have to maintain a record of where the tree was growing before it was cut, where it was taken for cutting. how much wood came out and how much is now left. Then they will inspect and give clearance. Every shipment is subsequently audited for timber legality assessment and verification standards. Due to these stringent rules restricting the sale and purchase of all varieties of Sheesham imposed a few years ago, the market share of wooden chess pieces and other wooden products has declined sharply,’’ he says. He adds that one has to pay around Rs 1.25 lakh to procure a license, in addition to an annual audit fee of Rs 40,000.Sharma who had made a chess set for English business magnate Richard Branson in 2021-22 says that “there was a decline of 40% than last year and now there is further decline.”Sharma says that it takes about five to seven days to carve out a knight and a month for the whole chess set; he adds that chess boards are easier to manufacture than chess pieces. “A few normal chess sets are made within a day also. For every chess piece, a different skilled labourer is required,” he says.”We have no government support; no subsidies are given to our industry. The winter is usually the busiest season, but most of us hardly have any orders,” he claims. Surjit Singh Ahuja, an Amritsar-based exporter, said that when the Netflix web series ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ was released in the UK in 2020 and later became a global hit, chess set sales went up many fold. The series is about the life of a young girl from a lower-middle-class family obsessed with chess. The impact on sales remained till December 2022. “However, sales plummeted right after because of competition from China as they get labour and material at lower costs; they make chess pieces from plastic that look like wooden pieces. Global instability is another major factor,” he says.
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