Traditional craft base cultural industries are linked with specific local community where craft products create ‘economic identity’, ‘regional identity’ and ‘cultural identity’ of community. In family-based business identity is constructed through family histories, knowledge and skill of craft. Sholapith craft is a traditional ritualistic and festive craft which is associated with ethnic, cultural and occupational identity and status of Malakar community of West Bengal. It was an ethno-craft as generation wise Malakars practiced and transmit it through family enterprises. It is one of such several community-based craft productions of West Bengal undergoing globalisation and commercialization. Craft commoditization and expanding market networks lead to the shifting of family-based production units to wage labour-based modes of production units. This transformation forcing them to hire other people as labour beyond own community. As a result, changes occur in organization structure, quality of products and production for ‘local use’ is replaced by ‘production for sale’. Involvement of wage labours one hand helps them to expand their market whereas it also brings some challenges, competition and politics in family based cultural industry. With addressing issues of insecurity and identity attached with a transformative craft production, the present study attempts to answer larger question - still caste identity mater in community-linked cultural industry?

Craftspeople from two craft production clusters (Surul and Bankapasi) have been purposively selected for present empirical study, who were directly involved with craft production. The techniques of primary data collection were observation method, semi structured interviews and case studies. The finding revealed that in the context of contemporary commercialized world, traditional craft identity of a specific community is in a transformation phase. The community-linked cultural industry is losing identity by involving more and more people from other communities with demand for production.

Shola craft is no longer considered as an ethno-craft as it exceeds the habitual boundaries of an economically confined social group. The study also revealed various factors responsible for the success in the market and how they cope up with this situation by adopting various resilience strategies.