Beyond the arterial roads that run through Bhiwandi, Maharashtra’s largest powerloom centre, there is a uniform clutter that gives the town the feel of a large extended workshop. A maze of muddy roads, twist and turn and intersect each other at a variety of angles, lined with discarded spools of thread and pieces of fabric. Sheds housing 30 to 40 looms each sit close to each other, cotton hangs in wisps from their ceiling and walls and from the clothes and hair of the men working inside. Outside some sheds are unopened white sacks of yarn.
Of the estimated 21 lakh powerloom machines in India, Bhiwandi has about 9 lakh, second only to Surat. Taking into account some illegal units, some weavers say that the number of looms could actually be in excess of 10 lakh. All of them sit in these approximately 40 sq km, and they employ over 90% of the taluka’s population.
For Bhiwandi, the Prime Minister’s announcement of demonetisation on November 8 came as the cruellest of surprises. Syed Abdul, a weaver, says that the power loom industry was already in trouble because exports had fallen. “As much as 50 % of the cotton produced here is exported. But the duties we pay for export are high. And we are already losing out in those markers to cotton made in China, Pakistan and Bangladesh where export licenses have been given out liberally.”
“Business had generally not been going well for the past year or more and we were hoping that there would be an upturn after Diwali,” says Abdul Mannan Siddiqui, president of the Shantinagar Power Loom Welfare Association. “After demonetisation though, buying new clothes is not a priority for people and that in turn has an effect on our business. It could take a long time to recover from a few months of bad business.”
Two months after the demonetisation decision, life in Bhiwandi was at a virtual standstill. “The problem is that this is the only industry here,” Mr Siddiqui explains. “When anybody has some money to invest they put it into the loom business. When we make a profit then that is also reinvested into the business. So when there is a slowdown like this there is no fall-back option.”
During a visit by Textile Minister Smriti Irani, several prominent weavers came together to discuss demonetisation and the older issue of lowering export duty. The message from the government, they say, is to try and open bank accounts for the workers and move toward digital payments. “But if the workers find it hard to open a bank account and have to stand in queues for days, they get impatient. Most of them have already left to find other work,” a weaver says.
Things have eased recently in terms of cash flow, with the RBI lifting the limit on the amount of money that can be withdrawn from ATMs. But it may take a long time yet, before the workers can return. The mainly migrant workers who run the looms — from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and a few other States — have already gone back to their villages. Those units that are still running only operate for about three days a week while many of the sheds have remained locked for weeks now.
Bhiwandi’s residents always had a sinking feeling that the official line, that the note ban is a temporary inconvenience to be put up with for the good of the country, was not going to apply to them. About 35% of the looms here had closed down even before demonetisation, with weavers citing various reasons such as competition from foreign cloth and vacillating yarn prices. In that context, demonetisation was hardly going to be a small complication.
For workers and loom owners alike, a reluctant realisation is slowly dawning: that recovery could take years. And for Bhiwandi, already straining under the pressure of supporting so many livelihoods based on a single industry, times may only get worse.
