The Last Diya Makers of Doora

The place

Doora is a village in Mysuru taluk, about 20 km south of the city. In Kannada, doora means "far away".

14 Kumbara (potter) families here run a small cooperative, the Kumbara Kushala Kaigarika Sangha, to help each other survive. More than 50 artisans belong to it.

WAIT, REALLY?

At Deepavali, Doora's clay lamps went out to four districts: Mysuru, Chamarajanagar, Mandya and Kodagu.

A lamp still costs about ₹1 at the village production centre.

4,500 years ago

Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum holds a clay lamp from Nal in the Indus Valley, dated to around 2500 BC.

It was made on a potter's wheel. Then the potter pinched its four corners to hold the wicks, the same trick a diya's spout uses today.

FUN FACT

The museum notes that Indus potters were using the wheel thousands of years before potters in Britain.

The name Kumbara comes from Sanskrit kumbhakara, "pot-maker". North India says Kumhar.

A potter's son became Kannada's poet

Sarvajna, the 16th-century poet whose three-line tripadi verses are still quoted across Karnataka, came from a potter's family, as tradition and his own verses tell it.

TING!

A well-baked lamp rings when tapped. A dull thud means it's under-fired and may crack. Doora's potters check every single lamp this way.

Doora's Deepavali output

That's a fall of nearly 95%, reported by Star of Mysore in October 2025.

Year by year, the same story

• 2021: of 14 families, only 8 still made diyas.
• 2023: about 60,000 lamps, down from "not less than 2 lakh".
• 2024: about 70,000, down from 3–4 lakh.
• 2025: about 50,000.

The "before" number changes with who was asked and when. Every year, the direction is the same: down.

OUCH

Doora used to send about 3 lakh lamps to Tamil Nadu. Now it sends about 30,000. Tamil Nadu built its own clay-lamp industry.

In Mysuru city, the potters' area of Kumbarageri stopped making lamps altogether, for lack of space and facilities.

What Mysuru shoppers pay

Clay: ₹1 at the production centre (2025), ₹3–5 at sale (2024). Moulded: ₹25–35 (2024), ₹50–100 (2025), mostly brought in from other states.

PLOT TWIST

The clay lamp is the cheaper one, and it's still losing.

Buyers pick the moulded lamps for their glossy finish and new designs. Price isn't the problem. Looks are.

Meanwhile, costs went up

Doora's potters said in 2021 that clay, firewood and transport cost 4–5 times more than a decade earlier.

Orders used to arrive 3–4 months before Deepavali. Now lamps are mostly made to order.

The usual suspects

• 💡 Electric strings and LED lamps, once mostly from China
• ✨ Moulded and painted "designer" lamps
• 🏺 Porcelain, brass, bronze and glass lamps
• 📦 Fancy lamps sold online

THE CONVENIENCE TAX

A clay diya needs oil, a wick, and someone to keep relighting it. A string of lights needs one switch.

Potters across India say the same thing: people don't want the trouble of filling oil.

Melkunda K, Kalaburagi

About 50 potter households. In the festival season, each family makes about 60,000 lamps a month.

Wholesalers from Yadgir, Raichur, Kalaburagi and Solapur buy them at ₹1 each. Families here pray to the clay as Goddess Lakshmi.

Khanapur, Belagavi

Potter Krishna Kumbar says demand hasn't fallen. Customers want variety, so they make it: lamps that burn for up to 24 hours, and new designs.

His son, a BSc graduate, chose to stay in the craft.

THIS WEEK

On 5 November 2026, news agency IANS photographed Mysuru artisans making clay diyas ahead of Deepavali, amid what it called increased demand for earthen lamps.

A good sign, but there's no count yet for this year.

Pottery Town, Bengaluru

Founded in 1926 by 40 families from Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, who came after the city's first railway line was built. About 100 families live there today.

They now make 2–3 lakh clay tea cups a month for city cafés and restaurants. That's steady work all year, not just at Deepavali.

SMART MOVE

When sales collapsed in the pandemic, a potter named Suresh and others reached out to a regional social-media star with 12 lakh subscribers.

Then they started pottery classes, after hearing that cafés charged for the same thing.

A potter family's season

At Melkunda: 60,000 lamps × ₹1 = ₹60,000 a month in peak season.

That's before paying for clay, firewood, transport and the whole family's labour. Our arithmetic.

HARD TRUTH

A clay lamp's price has barely moved, while its costs have multiplied. Bengaluru potters pay about ₹1,200 for one truckload of clay from Hoskote, because nearby lakebeds are polluted, plus commercial rates for water and electricity.

Karnataka's quiet record

The Central Village Pottery Institute at Khanapur, on the Malaprabha river, was set up in 1954. It is the only national institute devoted to pottery training and research.

Its products are sold at Hubballi railway station, and many graduates open their own studios.

THE WHEEL WITH A MOTOR

Under the national Kumhar Sashaktikaran Yojana (potters' empowerment scheme, 2018), potters get electric wheels and training.

Officials said in 2020 that one potter's output rose from about 100 to 600 cups a day, and more than 18,000 wheels had been given out.

FAIR POINT

No lamp wins every row. LED wins on hassle. Clay wins on price, and on where your money goes.

Traders: "Swadeshi Diwali"

The traders' body CAIT put Diwali 2025 sales at a record ₹6.05 lakh crore and said 87% of shoppers preferred Indian-made goods. It named clay lamps among the products that gained.

CAIT is a traders' lobby, and its figures are survey estimates. "Made in India" also covers factory-made lamps, not just village potters.

Temples and towns: bulk orders

That's a Guinness World Record, counted by drone. Big Deepotsavs like this need potters by the hundred.

Railways: tea in clay

Since 2019, the Railways have pushed clay kulhads (tea cups) at hundreds of stations to replace plastic. It's tried before and fizzled, partly over complaints about cup quality.

A promise made in Mysuru

On 5 January 2026, at the first state-level convention of the Kumbara community in Mysuru, the then chief minister said a Kumbara Development Corporation would be launched soon, with grants.

We couldn't find a report of it starting work yet.

Four clay belts, four stories

• Doora (Mysuru): shrinking, hoping for support.
• Khanapur (Belagavi): free clay from farmers' fields, steady demand.
• Melkunda K (Kalaburagi): volume, at ₹1 a lamp.
• Pottery Town (Bengaluru): switched to cafés and classes.

THE PATTERN

Where clay is free and buyers want variety, potters do fine. Where clay is costly and the product never changed, they struggle.

It's not about a dying art. It's about clay, design and market.

THE HARD PART

Guilt won't save Doora. A steady market will. Fifteen days of work sold for ₹1 isn't a business. Cheap clay, a shared modern kiln and year-round products would change more than one festival's sympathy.

MY TAKE

Keep your fairy lights. Just put one row of clay diyas at the door. It costs less than a pizza and goes to a family 20 km away.

This Deepavali

• Buy 20 clay diyas from a potter, a cooperative or a roadside seller: about ₹60–100.
• Ask where they were made. Local is best.
• Old household trick: soak new diyas in water for a few hours before use, so they drink less oil.

After the festival

• Wash, dry and keep them for next year.
• Broken ones? Put the pieces at the bottom of a plant pot for drainage.
• Buy a clay pot, planter or kulhad in March too. Potters need year-round sales.

Stay safe

• Keep lit diyas away from curtains, rangoli powder piles and crackers.
• Never leave them burning in an empty room.