A.R. Ramadas, a handloom weaver of Paramakudi in the drought-prone district of Ramanathapuram, rues his fate. Living in an old, rented house with walls lined with cracks, Ramadas, who is in his 70s, does not want his school-going granddaughters to have any association with weaving when they grow up. Coming from the Saurashtrian community, who take pride in their traditional occupation, Ramadas is emphatic. “It is not at all a paying profession. Why should they get into this business which involves tough working conditions?” asks the veteran weaver, who established Sree Pandian Cooperative Weavers’ Society 40 years ago.
Ramadas is not alone in his decision. As is happening in agriculture, young people are moving away from weaving and the share of senior citizens in the overall population of weavers is on the rise.
Thanks to the growth of opportunities in the formal sector, the younger generations of weavers are increasingly attracted to better paying, white collar jobs. “This is why we won’t mind even the link with weaving getting snapped after our generation,” laments G.G. Ramanathan, vice-president of the weavers’ society.
While the drift of youngsters away from weaving can be attributed to the chronic problems faced by the craft, the sector took a severe beating in 2016-17 when the production and sale of handloom cotton cloth declined sharply. Demonetisation and the shortage of cotton yarn coupled with a steep hike in its prices complicated the situation, say weavers of Nilayur, near Madurai.
Greying trade
Ramadas’ house doubles up as the work-place for him and his son, A.R. Kuppusamy, who is in his early 40s. Two handlooms take up nearly all the space in the house, leaving little living room for the family. Ramadas’ wife waits for him to join her for lunch as he talks to us about the travails of his ilk.
Ramadas’ anguish is shared widely among the weaving community and the officialdom too is conscious of the need for greater support for the sector.
“You will not find many young people in this profession,” says Kuppusamy, who studied a diploma course in electronics and communication engineering (ECE) nearly 25 years ago. “When I was in my 20s, a majority of the people of my generation joined the family profession. It is not happening now,” he says, weaving a silk cloth.
However, a senior official in the State Directorate of Handlooms says that it is only in the area of cotton cloth weaving that the youth are perceptibly absent. “If you go to Kancheepuram, famous for silk sarees, you can find the presence of youngsters in the looms. It all depends upon how much money weaving can bring in,” the official says.
He agrees that the handloom sector should be made economically attractive. “Conditions should be in place for every weaving household, specialising in cotton, to earn a minimum of ₹20,000 a month. At present, it is with great difficulty that we are getting around ₹8,000 a month,” says Ramadas.
T.N. Jaishankar, who hails from the famous weavers’ colony of Emaneswaram in Paramakudi, again in Ramanathapuram, articulates his belief: “If the authorities are more proactive in supporting handloom cooperative weavers’ societies, we can do wonders.”
The demand of Jaishankar, who is the president of the Jaibharat Weavers’ Cooperative Society and a former vice-chairman of Paramakudi municipality, seems reasonable. Nearly two-thirds of the handlooms in the State are with cooperative societies, numbering 1,067. Of these societies, barring 89, all the handlooms handle cotton.
Payment delays
It is not that there is no State support for the societies. There are schemes such as the 10% price subsidy on cotton and silk hank yarn supplied to the weavers’ bodies, 4% interest subsidy, as well as rebate subsidy ranging from 20% to 30%, apart from a host of welfare schemes. “No one is disputing the fact that the schemes are all well meaning. But, when even a modest organisation like our Sree Pandian Handloom Cooperative Weavers’ Society is owed several lakhs of rupees, the efficacy of the schemes needs to be questioned,” says Ramadas.
A sum of ₹36 lakh is due from the government for the schemes of rebate subsidy and interest subsidy.
“Even the Tamil Nadu Handloom Weavers’ Cooperative Society (Co-optex) owes ₹12 lakh to us,” he says, adding that in all a sum of ₹48 lakh has to be cleared.
The case of the Paramakudi society is only an illustration of a trend. The Directorate’s official says some ₹350 crore is the outstanding amount to be paid by his department to various societies towards the scheme of rebate subsidy.
This year, the government has set apart ₹80 crore for this purpose. An official of Co-optex explains that his organisation takes, on an average, 45 days to settle bills from the weavers’ societies.
As far as the State government is concerned, the inclusion of “bogus claims” in the societies’ bills is one of the reasons for its “cautious scrutiny” of the bills that leads to payment delays. Officials say bills are inflated to receive higher rebate subsidies. A rule of thumb that authorities adopt is to shave off one-fourth of the bill amount.
New software
The government also suspects that the managing committees of elected cooperative societies have, in many cases, included a large number of non-weavers as members of the societies to inflate wage payments. The government has used a biometrics-based software called Common Accounting System on a pilot basis in some societies to accurately measure the value addition done by each member of the cooperative society. Officials say the system will be rolled out soon and will cut leakages in subsidy payments.
Even as the weavers complain of the precarious financial state of their units, at least a section of them has not viewed kindly a recent move by the authorities to increase the profitability of the societies.
Terming the stipulation of a 20% profit margin as “unrealistic,” Jaishankar says this will only push up the prices of their products when the handloom sector has been unable to match up to the powerloom sector whose products are much cheaper.
“The handloom sector can meet the competition effectively only if the government enforces vigorously provisions of the Handlooms (Reservation of Articles for Production) Act, 1985,’ says Manibaba, president of the Vetri Handloom Weavers’ Cooperative Society, Nilayur, near Madurai.
Saving the sector
Manibaba says 11 items, including dhoti, saree, towel, ‘lungi,’ and bed sheet/bed cover, have been reserved exclusively for production by handlooms. “Do you think that this clause is seriously being adhered to?” asks Manibaba.
Conceding that the law is not “aggressively implemented,” the official, however, claims that Tamil Nadu is ahead of other States with regard to inspection of powerlooms, one of the important conditions of the Act. Now, the textiles sector is witnessing the advent of air jet looms in a big way. During 2016-17, nearly 67,000 powerlooms were inspected and 55 first information reports (FIR) filed. In 22 cases, the legal proceedings led to conviction of the accused.
Even as the weaving community is for stronger State support and emphatic in saying that the cooperative societies, in general, would collapse if the existing level of support is withdrawn or tweaked substantially, Shanthi Raghunathan, a Salem-based wholesaler and retail dealer of sarees and who is herself from the community of weavers in Rasipuram, emphasises that adapting to customer demands holds the key for the survival of the handlooms sector, especially those trading in cotton cloth. Other retailers say that handloom products should be marketed as niche offerings since they cannot compete with mass-produced goods.
Within the government, opinion is gradually growing on the advisability of continuing the existing policies. When schemes for producing dhotis, sarees and school uniforms and getting them distributed free of cost to beneficiaries were conceived over 30 years ago, the interests of handloom cotton weavers alone were the guiding factor. But, their numbers have come down substantially over the years.
A former Secretary of the State Handlooms Department feels that given the limitations of the organised sector in employment generation, the field of handlooms, if properly guided, does have the potential of providing jobs to a sizeable number of the youth in rural areas, as, otherwise, the State’s rural economy will be put to severe hardship.
Hope survives
Weavers like Ramadas and Manibaba, despite being bitter about the way things are managed in the handlooms sector, feel that not everything is lost and there is enough room for improvement in the fortunes of the sector.
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