The so-called ‘fair and free trade’ today is neither fair nor free. Handloom and handloom workers face an uncertain scenario in the present era of technology and an unfair globalisation process

The responses to severe livelihood crises in our midst are beginning to border on the ludicrous.  When farmers or handloom weavers committed suicide, unable to pay their debts due to structural inequities in the system, the response of one state government was to say that they were deliberately killing themselves to cash in on the compensation amount announced by the government so that their families could live happily ever after.  Another solution resorted to by a state government was to avail the services of psychiatrists to counsel the farmers and weavers about maintaining a positive attitude in life and avoid committing suicide. 
Introspection by the governments themselves on how their policies are systematically destroying livelihoods of farmers and artisans, such as handloom weavers, and driving them to suicide is rarely the solution they come up with. 
The job-creating, environmentally sustainable and wholesome work of handloom weaving epitomises the values desirable for the 21^st century, plagued as it is by job-less, energy-intensive and environmentally destructive growth, which fosters over-consumptive lifestyles.  But experts blindly aping the decadent development models of the west find handloom weaving ‘inefficient’, ‘unfashionable’ and ‘destined to die’.  They would rather foster powerlooms and mills because these are allegedly ‘productive’, ‘efficient’ and ‘competitive’ in a globalised world.  
Since the Independence struggle itself was based on the theme of boycott of British mill-woven cloth which destroyed indigenous handloom weavers, there were many laws and much talk of protecting the handloom sector soon after Independence.  But this lip sympathy went hand in hand with the large-scale setting up of powerlooms and composite mills though it was known that every powerloom set up would displace 14 handloom weavers.
The 1985 Textile Policy was the first anti-handloom policy in the post-Independence period, but despite this it continued to speak of social objectives.  The policy intended to increase the production of cloth keeping the employment potential in view.  Further, despite its bias towards liberalisation, it provided measures to protect handlooms – significantly those of the Reservation Act and the Hank Yarn Obligation of the spinning mills. 
As per the Handloom Reservation Act, 22 items were reserved for production in the handloom sector (these have been recently reduced to 11).  As per Hank Yarn Obligation, spinning mills are required to process 50 per cent of their yarn production in hank form, required by the handloom sector, and the rest in cone form used by powerlooms and mills. 
But in reality, says the Hyderabad-based Centre for Handloom Information and Communication (CHIC) set up in response to the crisis in the handloom industry, the mills never met the target, the actual deliveries of hank yarn generally averaging about 25 per cent of total yarn output.  In addition to the shortage of hank yarn for handlooms, the situation was aggravated by large scale poaching of hank yarn by the powerloom sector which passed off powerloom products as handlooms.  The powerloom sector violated the Reservation Act as well with impunity by producing items reserved for the handloom sector as there was none to check the offences though these were non-bailable, if detected. 
The shortage of raw materials was further exacerbated by exports of cotton and cotton yarn in the wake of the New Economic Policy in the early ‘90s to earn foreign exchange to meet the consumerist demands of the affluent without consideration of domestic demand of weavers to sustain their livelihood.  The exports of cotton and yarn also resulted in steep increases in the price of hank yarn making handlooms uncompetitive, leading to unsold stocks in godowns and more than 200 starvation deaths or suicides of weavers.
Many of these problems of handloom weavers were aggravated with the phasing out of the quantitative restrictions (QR) on imports (in tune with the WTO regime) and the Report of the SR Satyam Committee set up in July 1998, which led to the formulation of the New Textile Policy, 2000, of the government.  Prof K Srinivasalu of Osmania University points out that despite the overarching significance of the committee, there was no representation from the handloom sector on it.   What’s more, in this age of transparency, the Satyam Committee Report has not even been made public.
The Satyam report seeks to undo whatever little protection still existed under law, says Prof. Srinivasalu of Osmania University.  The principal objective of the Report has been to recommend measures for coping with the competition in the international market.  Hence, handloom weavers are expected to ‘modernise’ by shifting to powerlooms and computer-aided designs. The government is to support them in this through special schemes, while the Reservation Act and the Hank Yarn Oblligation are to be scrapped as “unsuitable in this globalised age”.
The impression is also being created in some circles that the development of the mill sector itself has been hampered because of the ‘support’ given to the handloom sector. Dr Naresh Sharma of the University of Hyderabad refutes this premise in an article written for the Centre for Handloom Information and Policy Advocacy (CHIP) based in Chirala, Andhra Pradesh.  He says that while ostensible protection to the handloom sector has created the impression that it is surviving because of the ‘charity of the Indian tax-payer’, the immense support to the modern mill sector has remained invisible.  Dr Shyama Sundari, a reasearch scholar, argues in the same document that the handloom sector is not alone in seeking government support as even for encouraging industries with foreign collaboration, local government has a role in providing infrastructural facilities.  Handloom industry is also demanding that its needs for raw materials like yarn and dyes and marketing channels be met.
The Satyam Commission Report presumes that there will be no handloom industry after 2005 and that all handlooms should be converted to powerlooms by then.  Though Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have been taking initiatives to convert handlooms to powerlooms, there has been no support for the changeover in the form of skill training or rehabilitative measures.  The handloom weavers are expected to find the alternative employment on their own.
The expectation that handloom weavers can changeover to powerlooms is not based on reality. “One powerloom costs Rs 65,000.  A homeless and loomless weaver cannot invest such amounts,” says D Ramakrishna, current Convenor of South India Handloom Weavers’ Organising Committee (SIHWOC) and also of Rashtra Chainetha Karmika Samakhya of Andhra Pradesh. In Sircilla, 25 people committed suicide because they were unable to changeover to powerlooms.  The supportive market environment is not there even for powerlooms with stocks building up in godowns.   Due to liberalisation policies, the sales of even mill products are down. The whole industry is sinking.
According to D Ramakrishna, most weavers’ association representatives are from the creamy layers of merchants, chairmen of cooperatives, or master-weavers.  “Many of these associations demand only continuation of rebates and subsidies.  But what we really want is a policy that protects us, which is our right,” says Ramakrishna.  “Nobody is pushing the agenda of the homeless, loomless weaver in a bonded situation”. Ramakrishna believes that there is need for a broader alliance between all those in the textiles sector, including spinners, dyers, warpers, cooperatives, master-weavers, merchants, etc., going beyond affiliations of caste, religion, political parties, region, sector, etc.
According to Philip George, former Convenor of the SIHWOC, the Planning Commission recognised the lacunae in the Satyam Commission Report at a meeting in 2001 and agreed to set up a new Commission.  But this has been in limbo.  A subsequent State Textiles Ministers’ Conference in Tirupathi also expressed itself against the Satyam Commission Report.   But nothing much has come out of that either.
LC Jain, former Planning Commission member, compares the call to starving weavers to ‘drop Gandhi and go to the French designer Cardin’ as akin to Marie Antoinette asking the people to eat cake if they did not have bread.  He cautions about the risks involved to weavers in depending on exports and free trade, as world trade in textiles is one of the most restriction-ridden and is neither free nor fair.  “The developed economies, including the paragon of 301 virtues, the USA, are determined to ‘protect’ (a dirty word in India today) the interests of their respective textile workers”, he warns.
It is indeed an irony that our handloom weavers who have woven and continue to weave, without the aid of computers or power, the most complicated and beautiful designs the world has ever seen, are being asked to prove their competitiveness against those whose imagination often does not go beyond the weaving of vertical or horizontal stripes!
The Human Development report of UNDP for 2002 also states, “The average poor person in a developing country selling into global markets confronts barriers twice as high as the typical worker in industrial countries, where agricultural subsidies alone are about $ 1 billion a day – more than six times total aid.   These barriers and subsidies cost developing countries more in lost export opportunities than the $ 56 billion in aid they receive each year.  If there were a levelling of the global playing field, many of the gains would come in low-income, low-skill areas such as agriculture, textiles and clothing”. The Report also fears that though the 2001 World Trade Organisation meeting in Doha produced a framework for lowering trade barriers worldwide, there is concern that reductions in the most important areas – barriers against textiles and subsidies for agriculture – may stall when the formal rules are developed. 
The thesis of ‘economic efficiency’ of powerlooms and mills rests on the narrow calculation of ‘unit cost of production’.  It completely overlooks the ‘social efficiency’ (creation of jobs) and ‘environmental efficiency’ (non-use of power) of handlooms which should necessarily be taken into account in any such calculation. 
LC Jain recalls that in the ‘50s, PC Mahalanobis had flagged ‘unemployment’ as the overriding problem of the country. He wanted that machines, if already installed in consumer goods sector, should be kept idle but hands should not be kept idle.   But despite devastating evidence provided over the last few decades to the contrary, a 2002 Planning Commission report on employment prospects still hopes that 6 million new jobs will be created by the small-scale industries and 7 million by poverty alleviation schemes by 2007.   This is sheer self-deception, believes Jain.
Jain hence pleads that the preservation of lakhs and lakhs of existing jobs, as in the handloom sector, should come before creation of jobs.  The government will never be able to provide alternative jobs to 12.5 million people dependent on handlooms. Jain rues: “Unemployment is curse enough for the millions afflicted by it, but the dust and hopelessness, if not deception, heaped on their heads and hopes by the policy-makers should make Mother India weep”.
As Jean Dreze said at the Asian Social Forum in Hyderabad recently, “given their circumstances, it is a wonder how millions of poor find the courage to live and struggle at all”.  Possibly, the handloom weavers are the first ones declaring with their suicides that there is a limit to their courage and struggle.

Kathyayini Chamaraj is a researcher and freelance writer based in Bangalore. She can be contacted at kathyayini_chamaraj@hotmail.com

Print this article

Click to advertise here

Copyright © Foundation for Humanisation. All Rights Reserved

The expectation that handloom weavers can changeover to powerlooms is not based on reality. “One powerloom costs Rs 65,000.  A homeless and loomless weaver cannot invest such amounts,” says D Ramakrishna, current Convenor of SIHWOC and also of Rashtra Chainetha Karmika Samakhya of Andhra Pradesh. In Sircilla, 25 people committed suicide because they were unable to changeover to powerlooms.  The supportive market environment is not there even for powerlooms with stocks building up in godowns. Due to liberalisation policies, the sales of even mill products are down. The whole industry is sinking.

A sari situation

Rajesh, a master-weaver, owns 12 looms and lives somewhere in Besthara Beedhi (Fishermen’s Street) in Yelahanka Town, about 20 Km to the north of Bangalore.  He is full of earthy wisdom even as he explains the situation affecting the weaving community.  He belongs to the proud caste of Padmasaligas, the original weavers, who look down upon new entrants to the profession.  For many years now, he explains, he has not been receiving regular orders.  “Out of ten saris that leave for the market every week, seven are coming back home to roost,” he says.  But still, he has not retrenched any weavers from his service, keeping them occupied with minimum work.  “I am able to bear the risk,” he says. 
He complains about the problems created for the handloom weavers by the powerlooms.  “We (handloom weavers) are like small fish when compared to the whale (powerlooms).  The fish should swim in the lake and the whale in the ocean.  If the whale starts swimming in the lake, the small fish cannot survive,” he says.  The powerlooms are producing ‘handloom look-alike saris’ at half the cost and ruining handloom markets, he says.
In addition, if the government does not release enough Chinese silk into the market, the powerlooms grab the silk meant for the handlooms leaving them short of yarn.  How much Chinese silk is imported and released into the market is a political decision which depends on the extent of bribes given, he opines.  If the market is good, Rajesh says, he makes Rs 150 gross profit on each sari.  After discounting the cost of inputs that he provides, such as electricity, dyeing, designs, card punching, etc., he is left with Rs 75-90 net profit per sari. 
Srinivas and Krishna Reddy are weavers who do not own looms and hence work for master weavers in Yelahanka.  Most of the looms in Yelahanka are pit looms where you have to stand and work the whole day long.  Most weavers work from 6.00 a.m to 6.00 p.m.  There are some who work for 15-16 hours a day to earn Rs 200-300 more.   Sunday is also a working day on which they work until 10-11 a.m.   Ordinary silk saris fetch them Rs 150-300 as wages while the more complicated saris with intricate pallu, border and motifs fetch them about Rs. 800.  But while they can weave up to three ordinary saris in two weeks’ time, a sari with complex designs takes them a full week.  If the design has to be changed, it takes them a whole week to prepare the loom afresh for which work they do not get paid.  Master weavers, however, claim that this work is done by their own family members.  On an average, the weavers earn Rs 400 per week and about Rs 1,400-1,500 per month. 
Contrary to what the master-weavers claim, the weavers believe that the loom owners earn Rs 300 profit on each sari.  “The fact that the master-weavers are buying lands and moving around in cars is proof of that,” the weavers claim.  They are, however, not aware at what prices their saris are sold by the retailers in towns and they do not know the cost of the raw material that goes into a sari either.
While loom owners claim that they pay weavers a bonus every year of Rs 5 on every sari woven, weavers claim that it is only Rs 2-3. They have absolutely no other benefits from their employers, no leave, sickness benefit, etc.  They recall that one weaver worked for 60 years and when he decided to retire, he got no retirement benefit of any kind from his employer.
When asked why they had not considered forming a weavers’ union, Srinivas says that the moment the loom-owners hear of such attempts being made by anyone, they stop giving yarn to that particular worker. “We know it is unjust but can we break our heads against a rock?” he questions.  “We will all stop work and agitate for a whole month if you are willing to feed us and our families for that period,” he says.                                    - KC