Hyderabad: Traditional handloom clothes are not products of technical excellence, but are an integral part of the culture and heritage of the country and the state.
Unfortunately the government has been party to diluting this culture by not providing the requisite institutional support and by further weakening it with the mechanised powerloom industry.
On Thursday, the Union ministry of textiles admitted that the government and the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Labour had attempted to change the definition of handloom, eliminating the difference between handloom and powerloom.
However, with pressure from weavers and civil society members, the government said that it had reconsidered its stand and no changes would be made. The Union ministry said that the idea to change the definition of handloom had been conceived to increase productivity and reduce manual work on looms.
However, the manual labour that weavers put in is the defining characteristic of handloom that lends it elegance and beauty. The current definition of handloom in the Handloom Act is any loom other than powerloom.
This was contemplated to be changed to “handloom means any loom, other than powerloom; and includes any hybrid loom on which at least one process for weaving requires manual intervention or human energy for production.”
A sub-committee, however, recommended against this new definition. The government had claimed to have conceived the idea to increase productivity but weavers and activists said they didn’t understand the rationale behind this move and are unhappy with the move.
Next: Weaver’s count down by five times
Weaver’s count down by five times
Hyderabad: Clothing and food are the most basic needs of humans, but it is ironical that weavers and farmers still form the most vulnerable sections of the society.
Farmers’ suicides continue unabated while weavers continue to shift to other professions due to lack of work. The number of weavers in the state has reduced by nearly five to six times over the last seven years. Currently, there are only about 1.77 lakh weaver families in the state with 3.55 lakh weavers.
Government figures suggest that there were about 43.3 lakh weavers in the country in 2009-10. This number was drastically less from 1995-96, when there were about 65 lakh weavers. AP has been hit the worst with the number of weavers’ families coming down to about a lakh.
However, the number keeps changing as many migrate to other jobs and come back to their profession if circumstances permit. Some even say a lot of families have been left out of the count. Past reports have found that nearly 88 per cent of weavers are Below the Poverty Line (BPL) and 42 per cent of them never receive any education.
There are no solid public figures on the number of weaver suicides in the state unlike that of farmers. But former minister for handlooms and textiles, P. Shankar Rao, had said in 2011 that 441 weavers had committed suicide between 2005 and 2011.
These depressing figures can be contrasted against the prosperity of the powerloom industry. A study commissioned by the Planning Commission on the handloom industry found that handloom production had increased from 742 million square metres in 1951 to 7,352 million square metres in 2000. These are encouraging figures but the real picture emerges in comparison to the powerloom figures.
