Shilp Samagam Mela 2026 in Mysuru: 83 Stalls, 12 States

The Union Secretary of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Shri Sudhansh Pant, went round the Shilp Samagam Mela 2026 at Mysuru in Karnataka on 18 October 2026. The nine-day craft fair is laid out at the Mysuru Dasara Exhibition Grounds. The Secretary looked through the stalls, spoke to the managers who run them and met visitors. He is in the city on a two-day official visit to review, with the local administration, the schemes and programmes the Ministry is running there, and is also seeing sites.

What the Mela is

A Shilp Samagam Mela is a selling platform the Ministry builds for artisans and beneficiaries drawn from the Scheduled Castes, the Other Backward Classes and Safai Karamcharis. Three national corporations hold it jointly:

• NSFDC, the National Scheduled Castes Finance and Development Corporation
• NBCFDC, which is the National Backward Classes Finance and Development Corporation
• NSKFDC, that is to say the National Safai Karamcharis Finance and Development Corporation

All three lend to artisans and other eligible borrowers.

The Mysuru edition by numbers

The fair opened on 11 October and runs until 19 October. It carries 83 stalls in all, of which 80 have gone to artisans, and 37 of those artisans are women. Craftspeople have travelled from 12 States and Union Territories: Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Kerala, Rajasthan, Puducherry, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh. On sale are handloom sarees, spices, pickles, incense sticks, honey, block-printed cloth, leather goods, wooden toys, bags and purses, terracotta, artificial jewellery, rosewood wall hangings and bed and cushion covers, with food stalls serving traditional dishes alongside.

What an artisan gets

Taking part costs the artisan nothing. The Ministry hands over the stall free and pays towards travel, a daily allowance, the carriage of goods and meals, under the arrangements in force. The fair doubles as an information counter: a visiting beneficiary learns there what loans and entrepreneurship support the three corporations offer.

BHARAT TULIP and the fairs ahead

Alongside the melas the Ministry is pushing BHARAT TULIP, the Traditional Artisans Upliftment Livelihood Programme, which carries the goods of target-group artisans to digital marketplaces in India and abroad under one brand name. Mysuru is the first Shilp Samagam Mela of the financial year 2026-27. Guwahati follows from 21 to 28 October 2026, and fairs at Dilli Haat in New Delhi, at Jodhpur and at Lucknow are proposed within the same year. The Ministry will also take a stand to the India International Trade Fair 2026 at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, from 14 to 27 November 2026, and to the Surajkund Mela in February 2027. Since 2022 it has held 13 such fairs, which have benefited 975 artisans in all.