Caught in its Warp and Woof, Handloom Sector Needs A Lease of Life

Devising a National Handloom Policy in sync with the ground realities can be the first step to revive the sector.

Revamping the Handloom Sector

• Policies and measures need to work in sync with each other, starting with a National Handloom Policy
• Situation is depressing, with the share of full-time weavers dropping from 64% in 1995-96 to 44% in 2009-10
• Course correction is necessary, but that can happen only when the wise words of the past are contextualised into today’s realities

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech marking the first National Handloom Day has triggered some debate about the handloom sector. But unfortunately, as is wont nowadays, arguments for handlooms fluctuate between the revivalist (let’s work towards an Indian pride) and the sympathetic (let’s save the weavers). Unfortunately again, both indulge in rhetoric and bombast, cut off from grassroots realities.

Modi was right in asserting that reviving the handloom sector can be a way to fight poverty. The sector is still huge, even though the number of weavers and allied workers dropped from 65.51 lakh in 1995-96 to 43.32 lakh in 2009-10. And most of them are poor: below poverty line (BPL) households account for 57% of total handloom households. The average annual household income was a pitiable Rs 36,498. In spite of its impoverished status, handlooms account for 11% of exports in the texiles and clothing industry. There’s scope for growth of the sector, and there’s a need for helping workers.

And, there’s a way to do all this.

Policies and Measures

The prime minister rightly talked about this being an unorganised sector. So, to do the needful, policies and measures need to work in sync with each other, starting with a National Handloom Policy. This, in turn, needs to dovetail with the National Textiles Policy, which has been hanging fire for months.

A draft consultation paper of the Planning Commission in October 2014 had suggested a number of measures, starting with the need to evaluate the sector itself: “It is imperative to understand that handloom products, being labour intensive, cannot be produced for the mass market and cannot be cheap. Providing protection under Reservation of Articles is unsustainable in an open market.”

Problems abound. For instance, those who work with silk are caught between the devil and the deep sea – from competing with Chinese silk in the Indian market to combating the impact of climate change on silk farming. Overall, the situation is depressing: the share of full-time weavers dropped from 64% in 1995-96 to 44% in 2009-10, meaning those who are sticking to weaving are either extremely passionate about the profession or probably because they can’t find a way out of poverty. The National Handloom Development Corporation (NHDC) too needs to be revamped, shaken from bureaucratic lethargy and inefficiency. It supplies only 15% of the yarn requirement of the handloom sector; it should do more.

Textile Ministry’s Stepchild

So far, the handloom sector has remained the stepchild of the textiles ministry. Barely 10% of resources are allocated to handlooms, and the sector faces threats from its cousins in the industry. Provisions of the Handloom (Reservation of Articles for Production) Act are hardly implemented, and powerlooms that illegally produce cotton/silk yarn sarees go scot-free.

Rhetoric cannot work when you can’t implement your own laws or do not abide by what experts recommend. There have been enough official documents on handlooms – from the Sivaraman Committee and Abid Hussain Committee reports to those of the Planning Commission and Working Groups of the Textiles Ministry. The 2014 Planning Commission paper was right in suggesting that a course correction is necessary, but that can happen only when the wise words of the past are contextualised into today’s realities and the government ensures that subsidies, instead of flowing in a spate to the affluent powerloom sector, reaches the handloom sector too.

Measures like the roping in of high-profile designers and launching the ‘India Handloom’ brand are welcome, but those can only yield dividend when the institutional base is strengthened. The handloom cooperative apparatus needs to be restructured, and credit schemes need to be made more accessible. What the handloom sector needs is a level-playing field, and a little bit of initial hand-holding.

[Subir Ghosh (www.subirghosh.in) is a Bangalore-based journalist and researcher]