A festival bazaar is easy to romanticise. Running one well is something else entirely.

At most of India's craft fairs, the relationship between artisan and visitor is a kind of performance. The artisan is admired, photographed, appreciated. The visitor leaves with a memory and perhaps something small. The economics of the artisan's household, in the main, are untouched.

The Virasat bazaar was built differently. Each year, the festival is scheduled in the window between Dussehra and Diwali, the most important commercial season in the Indian calendar, when households are buying textiles, decor, and gifts. Artisans are not booked as exhibits. They are hosted as merchants. Buyers arrive ready to spend. The festival's job is to make sure the prices are fair, the makers are protected, and the connection made at a stall can carry past the fifteen days.

Underneath this commercial layer sits REACH's deeper work. Self-help groups for over 1,600 artisan families. Design and marketing support that travels with the makers between festival editions. Revival projects for crafts on the edge of extinction - Ringal bamboo work in Uttarakhand, the Hanol temple restoration, the documentation of forms before they vanish. The bazaar is the visible part of a much larger livelihoods programme that runs all year.