A little tradition and subaltern craft, the wooden puppets or kathputalis were common to Gujarat, Rajasthan and the northern parts of India. After Independence, however, puppetry became a tool for development communication, reaching every nook and corner of rural and poor, urban Gujarat. With the 1990s, and the advent of globalisation, these innovations have found little encouragement and puppeteers have increasingly become workers of an entertainment heritage industry, leading to new forms of neo-brahminical and neo-mercantile exploitation.
