Contrary to common belief that necessity is the mother of invention, invention demanded, harnessed and engineered human nature and social practices to fit its own needs with the help of the nation state. The theory went that the spirit and the body of these destitute had to be first broken and then remolded to make a pliant and efficient labour force. People would go to sleep with a piece of string tied to their toes and the end of the string would be left hanging outside the window. Craft unlike industrial labour never had to be managed or engineered in this way. Crafts are human activities whose utilitarian and aesthetic dimensions are not split into two separate domains by economic considerations.
Building is also a craft.
A kothanar is a Tamil stone mason. He is versed in the craft of sculpting, masonry, geometry, astronomy, weather science, arithmetic and accounting. A thatchan is a malayalee carpenter, the first person to be consulted when a home or temple has to be built. He is proficient in the knowledge of timber, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, soil stability and so on. It is in this sense that building was also a craft like activity.