- Agriculture and Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) are critical to India’s economy, providing livelihoods to millions and ensuring food security.
- Both sectors are increasingly threatened by climate change, impacting productivity, economy, and livelihoods.
- India is witnessing a range of innovative climate-conscious initiatives across both sectors. Organising and scaling these efforts could accelerate the transition to sustainability.
My first encounter with the Aligarh lock happened when I was seven, as my father planned to send me to boarding school. Growing up in a rural setting, I had no idea what that meant, but I was excited about the travel opportunity and enjoying extra attention from my family. I vividly remember my mother, often tearful, meticulously preparing my essentials. She was particular about everything. She insisted that my uncles buy an Aligarh lock— a detail that stuck with me. For a long time, Aligarh remained synonymous with lock for me.
This incident highlights how Indian families trust Aligarh’s locks when it comes to protecting their belongings as well as emotions.
This is not limited to locks from Aligarh. Hundreds of such clusters across India have earned their names without any brand promotion. Here, the cluster is the brand, whether it is sarees from Varanasi or Mysore, ceramics from Khurja, leather goods from Kanpur, textiles from Surat, or pottery from Kachchh—the list is quite long, where artisans have built a legacy of trust and livelihoods over generations.
They also operate through a certain economy of scale, where all the units required to manufacture a lock, or a pot or a saree are clustered together within a geographical area. These clusters are classified as Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), which play a vital role in the economy and the livelihoods of millions of Indians.
For instance, the Aligarh lock industry currently helps around two lakh artisans earn their livelihood. Overall, the MSME sector employs 110 million people in India. Furthermore, the MSME sector is key in empowering India’s socially disadvantaged communities. A 2022 report by the Ministry of Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises states that nearly 66.27% of MSMEs are owned by socially backward groups.
Still, the MSME sector ranks second in sustaining livelihoods in India, with agriculture remaining the largest employment provider. The Periodic Labour Force Survey report for 2021–22, published by India’s Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, claims that agriculture employs 45.5% of the total workforce. Additionally, the sector remains crucial for ensuring food security for India’s billion-plus population.
At a crossroads
The success story of India’s agricultural and MSME sectors now faces new challenges, with climate change being one of the most complex and pressing. As part of its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), India has committed to reducing its emission intensity (volume of emissions per unit of GDP) by 45% and achieving net zero emissions by 2070. Given that MSMEs contribute nearly 30% to India’s GDP and over 45% to its exports, they also bear a significant carbon footprint—especially since over 80% of the energy they consume is for thermal processes like boilers and furnaces. Traditionally, fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas, and pet coke have met these energy demands.
Beyond voluntary emission reduction targets, Indian industries will also face risk of tariff barriers in global markets due to their high emissions. It will have a direct impact on artisans like 47-year-old Sajid Ali, a locksmith in Aligarh who relies on raw materials like iron, steel, aluminum, and brass to craft locks. Due to its energy-intensive processes, the metal industry is classified as a hard-to-abate sector in climate discussions. It has led to international conflicts, such as the European Union’s (EU) Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), a policy that will impose tariffs on carbon emissions associated with imported goods, starting with materials like steel, iron, and aluminum in 2026. For artisans like Sajid Ali, this means losing access to global markets if they use raw metals produced through carbon-heavy processes.
The changing climate is threatening not only the overall financial benefit of the industry but also the workers’ livelihood. The case of Sajida Sheikh, a 45-year-old worker in the textile industry, explains it better. Her job is to stitch wads of raw fabric that come for dyeing at Gujarat ECO Textile Park, a textile cluster at Palsana in Gujarat’s Surat district. She loses at least 10-12 working days due to floods every year. Cities like Surat also face challenges like increasing the number of heatwaves, which affect workers, reduce labour productivity, and can pose a risk to human lives too.
The agriculture sector is also facing similar conditions—from the emission burden, as it accounts for 14% of India’s gross greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, to the increasing impact of climate change. Deepak Shinde, a grape farmer from Nashik district in Maharashtra, expressed his frustration by saying, “We had learned everything about grape farming apart from fighting the weather and marketing our product.”
The increasing frequency of extreme weather events has started to impact India’s food policy, too. India had to ban wheat export in 2022 after committing to record shipment in the same year. Heatwaves during the Rabi crop have played a significant role in the policy decision to ban the export. The Economic Survey, 2022-23, underlined the adverse impact of climate change as one of the major challenges agriculture faces. This leads to a fear related to food security as the country has to feed around 1.67 billion by 2050.
All these facts underline how India’s two major economic drivers- agriculture and MSMEs- are facing a new reality, but the overall picture is not as bleak as it appears. Mongabay India, as part of the Climate Innovations series, reported from several states in the country and found that people are finding new ways to deal with environment-related challenges. The 30-story series gives a glimpse of efforts on the ground to adapt to and mitigate climate change and a push for sustainable use of critical resources such as water and energy.
People’s transition
A common theme that emerged was the drive to improve energy efficiency, whether in Kachchh pottery in Gujarat, Khurja ceramics in Uttar Pradesh, or Bihar’s brick kiln industry. These initiatives, with varying impacts, range from redesigning kilns to adopting cleaner fuels.
In Kachchh, for example, potters are saving both fuel and time due to more efficient kiln designs. Similarly, ceramic makers in Khurja have found that switching from coal to natural gas has made their products more competitive in international markets. However, Mongabay India found artisans like 55-year-old Sayeed Ahamed, who has been in ceramic making for generations, struggling in this transition. He lacks the land and capital needed to install a new kiln that is required to use natural gas. So, he is now dependent on larger industries to fire his pots. The transition in Khurja has placed him at a disadvantage in the market.
The efforts with climate consideration are not just limited to energy efficiency. There are experiments to create a market of deadstock with innovative design, converting air to water, Kanpur tanneries investing in a zero liquid discharge plant and an in-house laboratory to check the quality of water, and so on and so forth. All these efforts show good promise for a sustainable future. In the Surat textile industry, where the frequency of heatwaves is increasing, efforts are being made to provide workers with proper ventilated space and breaks to ensure efficiency.
In agriculture, in an effort to tackle inefficiency at sowing, harvesting, and processing, several startups have come and intervened with modern-day technologies like drones and artificial intelligence. They are helping to deal with weather uncertainty, too. Other efforts include switching to a more sustainable fertiliser, reviving agrivoltiacs where energy production and farming activities can go together, and building automatic ice stupas in Ladakh to make irrigation water available during the dry season.
Beyond this, there are efforts to improve the cattle economy. For example, Tamil Nadu has promoted Azolla, a fern, as a low-stock livestock feed, and efforts are being made to grow hydroponic fodder in Rajasthan and Karnataka to deal with fodder shortage that’s been aggravated due to climate change. Extreme weather events like heatwaves have also imposed several challenges on the poultry and cattle economy. There are efforts towards tweaking shed design in Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka and also to develop an organisational level system where veterinarians are available on call and can offer medical assistance for cattle in Andhra Pradesh. These initiatives have increased farmers’ income.
We found that most of these initiatives remain small-scale, scattered, and often emerge from local knowledge, practices, or regulatory restrictions without directly aiming broader climate goals like mitigation and adaptation. However, they have the potential to accelerate the sustainable transition that India is looking for.
To achieve this, it is important to recognise and scale these innovations, enabling other industries to adopt similar practices. There is also a need to develop institutional mechanisms that can enhance the market competitiveness of products resulting from these innovations. For example, if locks made by artisans like Sajid Ali from Aligarh gain recognition for their sustainable practices, it could strengthen the overall brand and incentivise artisans. Many, like Sayeed Ahamed in Khurja’s ceramic industry, are on the receiving end of challenges caused by the energy transition. A systematic effort is needed to ensure that the transition happening on the ground is ‘just’ and that no one is left behind.
For climate-conscious initiatives to succeed in unorganised sectors like MSMEs and agriculture, stronger collaboration between government, private industry, and civil society is essential to provide the necessary financial and technical solutions. Through the Climate Innovations series, Mongabay India’s stories aimed to contribute to the thriving ecosystem.
Read more: [Commentary] Conserving old ways in a new world
Banner image: Manufactured locks with keys. Local small-scale factory owners claim that the shift towards car scrap was driven by cost-effectiveness. Image by Zoya Ada Hussain/Mongabay.