Checkmate Amritsar! Chess biz falters as wars rage

Ongoing hostilities between Russia and Ukraine and Israel and Palestine besides recessionary trends prevailing in developed countries have meant that orders for chess pieces manufactured by small and medium enterprises in Amritsar have fallen by as much as 80 per cent this year.

It’s being called checkmate Amritsar — of the approximately 500 highly skilled artisans plus another 1,000 semi-skilled artisans involved in the trade, about half have lost their jobs, while daily working hours are down from 12 to 8 hours. Worth about Rs 20 crore annually, the industry has been struggling badly for the last several months. Rishi Sharma, a third generation chess manufacturer, told The Tribune that there has been a steep decline in export orders from key clients in the US, Europe, Canada and Australia. “Winter is the busiest season for the manufacturers,” he said, “but many of us hardly have enough work anymore”.

Amritsar-made wooden chess pieces are highly valued abroad for their exquisite craftsmanship, yet successive governments have ignored its promotion. It’s a small and highly specialised cottage industry with only 35 units engaged in this work. Master craftsmen painstakingly carve the chess pieces using simple implements.

The wooden chess sets are among the most sought-after gift items during Christmas in the Western world. The price of a complete chess set ranges from Rs 500 to Rs 20,000, depending on the quality. Only 12 manufacturers are engaged in its export.

Sharma, whose ancestors were once engaged in carving ivory bangles worn by Punjabi brides, rued that successive Punjab governments never bothered to take stock of handicraft items let alone to popularise it as a sport among students.

On the other hand, he told this reporter, his biggest customer in England invited him to take part in a chess festival in London’s Trafalgar square last year.

Surjit Singh Ahuja, an Amritsar-based exporter, said after the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), imposed stringent rules restricting the sale and purchase of all 130 varieties of “sheesham” or “tahli” in 2018, the market share of his wooden products declined sharply, especially chessboards.

New requirements mean that exporters have to pay Rs 1.15 lakh to procure a licence, besides an annual audit fee of Rs 40,000, Ahuja said.

“The whole process is so complicated. We have to give the details of every ‘sheesham’ tree from where the wood for the chess pieces is sourced. This means we have to record where the tree was growing before it was cut, then which market it was taken to after cutting, how much wood came out of it, and what not,” Ahuja added.

It doesn’t stop here. Every shipment is subsequently audited for timber legality assessment and verification standards. Worse, both exporters and importers have to independently get the “sheesham” verified, which ends up adding significant cost to the final product.

Over the years, the Amritsar chess manufacturing and export industry has gone through a variety of changes. Before Independence, chessboards and pieces were carved out of ivory. When ivory was banned, it was replaced by red sandalwood. Then the sale of red sandalwood was prohibited, giving way to “sheesham”. Now even the sale of “sheesham” is restricted.

But the manufacturers soldier on, nevertheless, rolling out the chess pieces in a variety of woods, including ebony, boxwood, German wood and Acacia. Chess pieces made from ebony, with its exquisite red polish are highly prized among connoisseurs of chessboards and pieces. Ebony commands high rates in the international market and is classified under the “exotic and luxury category”.

The industry received a shot in the arm when Netflix web series, “The Queen’s Gambit” — about a single girl from a lower middle-class family who is obsessed with chess and becomes an international star — was released in the UK in 2020 and subsequently became a hit worldwide. Local manufacturers were flooded with orders from Britain and elsewhere and many even expressed their inability to meet them.

Cut to the present. Over the last year, as the wars in Russia-Ukraine and the West Asia have raged and expanded, the gloom and doom has spread to Amritsar. As the holy city enters another winter of discontent, its artisans and manufacturers are pondering their next moves — will they become pawns in a game not of their making, or will they move around the pieces so that they can survive another year?