G. N. Gopikrishna, a social worker and development activist from Belagavi (a city in the southwestern Indian state of Karnataka), died on 20 September at the age of 75. He was widely recognised for intervening when the Italian luxury brand Prada appropriated the design of the traditional Kolhapuri chappal — a handcrafted leather sandal produced by artisans in the Athani area of Belagavi — without the consent of its makers, ultimately brokering a meeting between Karnataka's government, Prada, and local craftspeople that led to the company sending engineers to train artisans on site. A graduate of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, Gopikrishna spent decades supporting artisan communities, women's cooperatives, and handloom producers across India through roles at Oxfam India and Fabindia, and founded several rural skill-training centres in Karnataka that exported goods to markets in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East.